Sports fans hoping to sell unwanted Olympic tickets could be fined £20,000 for ticket touting.
Costly: If you end up with more Olympics tickets than you want- you must wait to sell them onThe clampdown will come as a blow to those who might end up with more Olympic tickets than they need because of the lottery process for buying.
Anyone who wants to sell or exchange a ticket must do so through the official website - but this will not be set up until next year.
It means anyone with extra tickets will have to wait at least eight months before trying to recover their money.
Applications for Olympic tickets closed last night. Payment will be taken from bank accounts some time between May 10 and June 10, although applicants will not be told which tickets they have secured until June 24.
Organisers are determined to ensure that no one profits from the Olympics by selling on their tickets. The Government recently increased the fine for ticket touting from £5,000 to £20,000.
Experts fear that over-zealous ticket-buyers who bought too many tickets, expecting to receive only a fraction of what they wanted, might be hit with overdraft charges or costly credit card bills if they cannot afford to pay for tickets next month and cannot sell them on.
A family of four with the most expensive tickets for the men's 100 metre final would have to pay £2,900.
This would cost £462.31 in interest at the average credit card interest rate of 18.28%.
A spokesman for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) says: 'It is against the law to sell tickets in the UK to London 2012 on the open market without LOCOG's permission.
'We are working with online auction sites such as eBay and Gumtree to make it clear that failure to remove a games ticket for sale is a crime.'