Rule of Law Online | Order 3,000 yuan durian and only pay 20 yuan? 14 persons involved were arrested
Benefits such as full discounts and subsidies on food delivery platforms are originally measures to benefit consumers and help merchants develop, but some people have misconceptions. In a case detected by the police in Ji'an, Jiangxi, a criminal gang hired brush operators and empty orders to defraud platform subsidies, and the amount involved was millions of yuan.
In February this year, a food delivery platform discovered a set of extremely abnormal consumption data. A user placed an order for durians with a total price of more than 3,000 yuan at a fruit store. However, after layers of discounts, the actual payment amount was only more than 20 yuan. This situation is not unique to this fruit store. There are also users who place orders for winter dates, grapes and other fruits with a total price of more than 1,000 yuan, but after discounts, the payment amount is only more than 170 yuan. The platform found that the prices of these fruits were normal market prices. The reason why there was such a big price difference was, on the one hand, the coupons or subsidy activities launched by the platform, and on the other hand, the merchants had set up large discount coupons. This is exactly unreasonable, because such a large full discount must be operating at a loss. Why would the merchant do this? The platform believed that the fruit shop was suspected of defrauding the platform's subsidies by brushing orders, so it reported the case to the police.
Tu Zhenkun, deputy squadron leader of the Hexi Squadron of the Criminal Investigation Brigade of the Taihe County Public Security Bureau in Ji'an City: The key is that the food delivery platform has two parts of discounts: the first part is the subsidy discount given by the platform. For example, the platform launches a 20% off event, with a maximum discount of 60 yuan. For an order of more than 3,000 yuan, you can get a discount of just 60 yuan. Of this 60 yuan, about 50 yuan is a subsidy provided by the platform itself. According to the rules of the platform, this subsidy was originally a discount for buyers. As long as the order shows "transaction completed", the platform will automatically transfer the 50 yuan into the merchant's back-end account. The second part is the large amount of discount coupons placed by the merchants themselves, reducing the actual payment amount to about 20 yuan, with the purpose of completing the order with the minimum principal.
The police learned from the buyer that in fact the buyer did not spend a penny and did not receive the fruits he ordered. He just wanted to receive free fruits and placed the order according to the fruit store's requirements. After the transaction was completed, the fruit store had returned the actual amount paid.
Tu Zhenkun, deputy squadron leader of the Hexi Squadron of the Criminal Investigation Brigade of the Taihe County Public Security Bureau in Ji'an City: After the order is completed, the merchant will not ship the goods, but will refund the actual payment of 20 yuan in full and give a small gift or a few yuan in red envelopes as a bonus.
The police further investigated and identified a 14-person criminal gang headed by Luo and Luo. They opened 13 offline fruit stores in Taihe County, Yongxin County and other places in Ji'an City. In the chat group, they induced ordinary citizens to act as "brush hands" to participate in short order transactions on the pretext of distributing benefits. In the transaction, the coupons or subsidies used by "brush hands" include the platform investment part. The criminal gangs get this part of the platform subsidy money, and each order can make a profit ranging from a few yuan to dozens of yuan.
Tu Zhenkun, deputy squadron leader of the Hexi Squadron of the Criminal Investigation Brigade of the Taihe County Public Security Bureau in Ji'an City: After calculating this, for a fake order of 3,000 yuan, excluding the commission charged by the platform and the compensation for brushing, the gang can still make a net profit of about 30 yuan per transaction.
After investigation, the gang made more than 30,000 false orders in just over a month.
Tu Zhenkun, deputy squadron leader of the Hexi Squadron of the Criminal Investigation Brigade of the Taihe County Public Security Bureau in Ji'an City: Because the platform subsidies are not fixed, sometimes the subsidies are high and the profits are high; when the subsidies are low, the profits are low. But over time, they made more than 30,000 false orders in more than a month, making a total of more than 1.1 million yuan in illegal profits.
According to the police, the premise for the issuance of platform subsidies is "the existence of real consumer transactions." The criminal gang placed empty orders through "swiping" accounts and did not actually deliver goods, fabricating the fact that "the transaction actually occurred" and concealing the truth that "no real goods were delivered"; the platform's risk control system misjudged the transaction as a legitimate transaction based on the "order completed" status, and credited the subsidy into the merchant's account. This more than 1.1 million yuan is not "welfare voluntarily given by the platform", but the platform's own property that was defrauded, which meets the elements of the crime of fraud under the criminal law. If citizens who act as "swipers" knowingly participate in empty orders and the circumstances are serious, they may also constitute fraud accomplices; even if they do not constitute criminal liability, the "cashback red envelopes" they receive are illegal gains, and the platform has the right to recover compensation.
Tu Zhenkun, deputy squadron leader of the Hexi Squadron of the Criminal Investigation Brigade of the Taihe County Public Security Bureau in Ji'an City: Many citizens and merchants have misunderstandings and believe that this is just "snatching wool", but the actual situation is that this kind of behavior of defrauding platform subsidies through false transactions and malicious brushing of orders is essentially fraud. According to the provisions of Article 266 of the Criminal Law, if the amount is particularly huge, the person may be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of more than ten years or life imprisonment.
After investigation, the police identified the store involved in the case and after mastering the organizational structure of the criminal gang, they launched a closing operation and arrested 14 suspects including Luo, Luo Chun, and Peng. At present, all 14 persons involved have been transferred to the procuratorate for review and prosecution, and more than 1.1 million yuan of stolen money involved in the case has been returned to the food delivery platform in full from May to June this year.
Qiu Xingyun, a police officer from the New Crime Investigation Brigade of the Criminal Investigation Detachment of Ji'an Public Security Bureau: We often see low-price electricity bills or free skins for playing games on some social platforms. Some people will easily believe it and be diverted to the corresponding group to participate in his activities or to complete tasks by swiping orders. At this time, we often fall into the trap of scammers unknowingly. Therefore, we must first carefully screen out those things that are cheap and profitable, and do not believe them easily.
