Shanghai Police Demolish Fraud Gang Utilizing Online Shopping Platform Loophole
TapTechNews June 20th news, according to the information of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau, recently, the Shanghai Pudong Police, in combination with the special operation of 'Sharpening Sword 2024', successfully demolished a criminal gang that cheats the platform allowance through the loopholes of the online shopping platform mechanism and illegally reaps profits, and all 9 members of the gang have been taken criminal compulsory measures on suspicion of fraud.
On April 1, 2024, when Mr. Chen, a staff member of an online shopping platform company, was analyzing the company data, he found that since October 2023, there have been dozens of online stores with abnormally fluctuating selling prices of goods, the goods worth 10,000 yuan the day before, but dropped to hundreds of yuan the next day. Without exception, these goods have all set the 'price protection'. That is, if the price of the goods drops within a week after being sold, consumers can apply to the platform for a refund of the price difference. And in order to improve the after-sales experience of consumers, the platform will automatically review the elements, and as long as it is in line with the required application, the platform will simultaneously carry out the automated process operation of垫付 the price difference to the consumers and collecting the relevant funds from the merchant.
Based on this, Mr. Chen inferred that someone deliberately used this mechanism loophole to defraud the platform price protection allowance. After a rough statistics, it was found that this situation was concentrated in dozens of newly opened online stores, and within just over a month, the amount involved has reached millions of yuan. So Mr. Chen reported to the Lingang New City Police Station of the Shanghai Pudong Public Security Sub-bureau for help.
Early in the morning of May 28, the Shanghai Pudong Police successfully caught the 9 criminal suspects led by Liu in other provinces and cities outside Shanghai and completely demolished the entire chain operation network of this fraud gang. After being brought to justice, the main criminal suspect Liu confessed to the criminal facts of jointly implementing fraud with his gang members.
He explained that in October 2023, during the shopping process, he found the price protection mechanism of this platform. After many attempts, he found that this mechanism was not manually reviewed and there were loopholes. So he had an evil idea and organized another 8 people from his hometown to operate together. They successively purchased business licenses and legal person material information and opened 29 online stores not under their own names, and then bought other people's online shopping platform accounts for 'elf-selling and self-buying' false transactions, to defraud the price protection allowance advanced by the platform. TapTechNews noticed that when the platform demanded the corresponding funds from the store, the criminal gang had already withdrawn the funds in the bank card bound to the store, and the store that only paid a deposit of 1,000 yuan was then abandoned. After investigation, the gang illegally profited through this platform loophole by more than 2 million yuan.
At present, the 5 criminal suspects including Liu have been criminally detained on suspicion of fraud, and the other 4 criminal suspects have been taken criminal compulsory measures such as obtaining bail, and the case is being further investigated.
The police also promptly informed the platform company of this situation and required the platform to further tighten the store registration review mechanism, optimize the reasonable price adjustment range of goods, use a big data model to detect abnormal stores in real time, and increase the amount of the account deposit when generating the price guarantee of abnormal data stores and other measures to avoid giving illegal criminals any more opportunities.