体坛英语新闻：Brazilian police break up Olympic ticket touts network

RIO DE JANEIRO, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's police broke up on Thursday a gang of ticket touts reselling admissions to the Olympic Games Rio de Janeiro.

They were allegedly charging up to eight times more than the original price on each ticket.

According to the television network Globo, at least 27 people have been arrested for participating in acts of fraud while another 50 people are currently being investigated. The people arrested face prison sentences of between one and two years.

The police started to suspect the group in April, after they announced on several social networks that they were offering tickets obtained through official distribution channels.

The band of resellers managed to buy around 2,000 tickets to several high-demand events of the Olympic Games, such as soccer and volleyball finals or the opening ceremony.

The Olympic Games Organizing Committee announced they have blocked all the tickets acquired by the group.

According to the Organizing Committee for Rio 2016, 72 percent of the available six million tickets for the international sporting event have already been sold. However, there are still 1.7 million tickets left.

The majority of the Olympic Games tickets cost between 40 and 70 reais (from 11 to 19 U.S. dollars) and the most expensive ones cost around 1,200 reais (around 327 U.S. dollars) for the priority seats at the basketball, volleyball, beach volleyball and athletics finals.