Source: China Police Network
"Boss, the flow of water 'exploded' today!"
Song Changqing (pseudonym) is the owner of an umbrella factory in Shangyu District, Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province, and usually does e-commerce. He opened the back of his online store and found that the number one selling umbrella in the store had sold more than 300 in a few hours. Although he felt a little strange, he didn't think much about it, thinking that he had just encountered a wave of "traffic".
However, on the second day, the order was met with a frenzy of returns, and on the third day, an overwhelming flood of bad reviews swept in.
"I thought he was besieged by a 'bad reviewer', but the other party didn't ask for anything......" Just when Song Changqing was puzzled, in just two months, he experienced 3 "devastating" "bombardments" of bad reviews.
It wasn't until he reported the case to the Shangyu District Branch of the Shaoxing Municipal Public Security Bureau that the truth behind this "inexplicable" "wave of bad reviews" was gradually revealed......
大量差评
"The first time I 'exploded', I thought it was a little strange. According to Song Changqing's recollection, it was April 2023, but he didn't think much about it at the time. "It wasn't until the next day that I found out that the refund rate was very high, and I didn't feel that something was right. Song Changqing thought that there was a quality problem with the product at first, so he went to the warehouse to carefully inspect it, but found no abnormality.
It wasn't until the follow-up buyer received the goods that he was stunned by the dozens of "bad reviews" that appeared - each of them said that "the goods were not right", he was selling automatic umbrellas, but the bad reviews said that he was selling rusty old-fashioned umbrellas.
"I added one of the buyers and asked what the reason was, and they said they were told to do it. Song Changqing thought that he had encountered a gang of "bad reviewers", but the other party quietly did not mention the matter of spending money to delete bad reviews, which made him feel even more uneasy.
What Song Changqing didn't expect was that in the next two months, he ushered in the second and third waves of "attacks". The other party even applied for a refund as soon as he set up the delivery - in this way, he not only lost the umbrella, but also the logistics and packaging costs.
After three "attacks", Song Changqing's umbrella link, which had already achieved the first place in the category, fell to second place. According to statistics, there are more than 1,600 orders refunded immediately after purchase and delivery, more than 100 bad reviews, and some goods are only refunded without return, which directly leads to the loss of more than 13,000 yuan in express delivery costs. As for the store turnover in the month after the "bad review", it plummeted by 1 million yuan, and the profit loss was more than 100,000 yuan.
In order to rush back to the first place in the category, Song Changqing had no choice but to choose to sell at a discount and exchange the lowest price for the praise of real buyers. When the discount was lowest, a 22 yuan umbrella was sold for only 11 yuan. "It's like having a dumb loss. Song Changqing complained to the platform while doing loss-making activities, and finally decided to report the case to the Shangyu police.
Vicious competition?
After receiving the report, the Cyber Security Brigade of the Shangyu District Public Security Bureau smelled a trace of unusual "breath" - with years of experience in handling cases, most of the malicious bad reviews in the past were personal behaviors, mainly using the shopkeeper's fear of bad reviews to carry out small amounts of extortion. But this time it was markedly different, appearing organized, premeditated, and menacing.
This case not only attracted the attention of the Shangyu police, but also attracted the attention of the Cyber Security Corps of the Zhejiang Provincial Public Security Department. Soon, a special case team with Shaoxing and Shangyu network security and police stations under its jurisdiction as the main members was established, and the project was tackled under the direct command of the corps.
"We found an e-commerce company located in Wenzhou (hereinafter referred to as 'Wenzhou company'). Wang Kai, the police officer in charge of the case, said that they felt a little surprised at the time, it was a large e-commerce company with thousands of employees, opened its own store, docked with a number of factories, and the product sales were operated by themselves, but the goods were directly sent by the manufacturer, and the company earned "operating fees", and the business has been good.
From a common sense point of view, this e-commerce company and manufacturer have a win-win cooperation, and there is no need to launch a "bad review tide" attack on the manufacturer's store.
Could it be the personal actions of the company's employees?
After investigating the flow of funds, information flows, and network flows, and carrying out multi-dimensional investigations, the cyber security department basically confirmed that in addition to Song Changqing, many manufacturers also suffered "attacks", and determined that this was a case of "cyber trolls" gang crime that suppressed the online stores of e-commerce platforms through malicious bad reviews.
After fully fixing the evidence of the crime, the Shangyu police carried out a net collection operation, and at the same time arrested in Wenzhou, Hangzhou, and Yiwu, and seized 17 working computers and 16 mobile phones on the spot. Some suspects are caught uneven knowing they have broken the law and believing it is legitimate business competition.
Malicious retaliation
After interrogating the suspect, the police found that behind this case, there was a hidden "grievance" of the e-commerce network.
It turned out that Song Changqing's umbrella factory had recruited an operator named Liu Dongdong (pseudonym), and under his operation, the link of an automatic umbrella of the factory became a "hot model", and it became the first in the umbrella category. Liu Dongdong left the company with resources, contacts and experience from the Wenzhou company before.
"We have a lot of operations staff, but the boss pays very little, and many of us quit one after another. Mr. Liu said he did not expect his former boss to be angry with the departure of employees and would retaliate against them.
It turned out that Chen, the "second-in-command" of Wenzhou Company, found that the products that were originally operated by his company and ranked first in the category were squeezed out one after another, and most of them were operated by departing personnel.
In a fit of anger, Chen discussed with the boss and decided to "hunt down" these products that ranked first in the category. They issued instructions in the company group: "Let's count which people are operating the same products with us outside after leaving the company, and such merchants find that one is knocked out of the other, and after the knock out, we will rush to the first place in the category" "Find one and kill the other, no matter what means".
After the order was issued, the Wenzhou company hired "brushers" at a price of about 8 yuan per order, specifically for employees who jumped out of the company and continued to engage in product operations, as well as bad reviews for merchants who ranked first in the category on other e-commerce platforms.
It has been found that the gang has accumulated more than 10,000 negative reviews for more than 100 merchants, which not only seriously infringes on the property interests of merchants, but also seriously disrupts the order of online consumption. Up to now, all 17 criminal suspects involved in the case have been taken criminal compulsory measures on suspicion of sabotaging production and business operations.
Source丨Cyber Security Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security