Chinese police have seized the country's largest ring of ticket scalpers, an extended family in the central Henan Province that scalped at least 100,000 train tickets in the past five years.

The ring of 11 members have earned more than 400,000 yuan (US$50,000) since early 2001 by buying up train tickets at the railway station and reselling them at higher prices.

Many travelers had to pay a surcharge of 30 yuan or 40 yuan (US$3.75 to 5) for a hard-won ticket because it is very difficult to get one in a country with 1.3 billion people, particularly on the eve of holidays.

Yang Shengli, the head of the ticket scalping ring, colluded with his wife and nearly all his relatives to do the business.

Yang opened up a ticket hotline, which he publicized with promises that he could get any ticket at any time. Yang and his brother answered the phone, took orders and sent a niece and a nephew out to buy up tickets daily at official ticket windows.

The tickets were then sent to a drugstore run by a cousin of Yang in a downtown hotel. From there, Yang's sisters and cousins would sell them at higher prices.

They were having booming business when a passenger from Shanghai turned them in, accusing them of extra charges.

The passenger complained to Zhengzhou railway police in July that he could not get a sleeper ticket at Zhengzhou Railway Station even though he had been waiting at the counter three days in advance.

The ring were seized in August but investigation is still going on.

China's railway police have been cracking down on train ticket scalpers since 2004.

Over the past three years, police have seized nearly 20,000 illegal ticket dealers and 100,000 tickets at a face value of 12.2 million yuan (US$1.5 million).

Some scalpers were found to sell fake tickets.

In China, trains are the most popular means of travel, especially over long distances. The railway carries 1.16 billion people a year, according to the Ministry of Railways.

(Xinhua News Agency October 23, 2006)