Fraud Attempt in World Cup Ticket Draw

The World Cup 2006 organizing committee first vice president, Horst Schmidt, said a person or a group of persons from within the US attempted to obtain a large number of tickets based on irregular addresses.

The addresses supplied in the applications made by Internet were fraudulent, organizers found.

"The orders were based on irregular addresses to obscure the identity of the sender," said a statement from the organizing committee.

"We contacted people by telephone who supposedly placed orders. Of those we reached, none had placed orders."

Checks were then carried out by e-mail and when no replies were received, the applications were withdrawn from the draw for tickets.

Ten million applications

Football's world governing body FIFA started the draw on Friday for the tickets after receiving 10 million applications for the 812,000 tickets available in the first phase of ticket sales.

The draw was made by five computers specially installed in the offices of the organizing committee.

The organizers said applicants from 195 countries placed orders. The lucky recipients will not be notified until April 22. The second sales phase will start in May and will deal only with team-specific tickets. It will be possible to order individual tickets again as of December.

The finals begin on June 9, 2006 and finish with the final in Berlin on July 9.