Investigation on grey production chain of online professional anti-counterfeiting： the routine is full and the wolf tactics are used to claim compensation.

Investigation on Grey Production Chain of Online Professional Counterfeiting

● In recent years, a considerable number of professional counterfeiters often take advantage of the loopholes in the shelf life of goods and the description of advertising language, deliberately buy in large quantities, demand the merchants to pay compensation, and even become professional claimants. Different from the anti-counterfeiting governance of e-commerce platforms, these professional counterfeiters are usually parasitic on major e-commerce platforms and extort money in the name of anti-counterfeiting, which seriously disrupts the market order.

● With the rise of online shopping, the "battlefield" of professional counterfeiters has also expanded from offline physical stores to online stores. In the eyes of professional counterfeiters, counterfeiting is also a technical activity, and it is necessary to be familiar with advertising law and e-commerce law, and there is a complete set of processes. It is understood that food, clothing, shoes and other industries have different anti-counterfeiting methods, and high-level shop counterfeiters are afraid to go to trouble easily.

● Most professional counterfeiters aim at making profits, and their role in cracking down on counterfeiting and maintaining public interests is very limited. Moreover, professional claims occupy a lot of administrative and judicial resources, which has a negative impact on normal market supervision.

□ Our reporter Zhao Li

□ Intern Dong Jinmeng of this newspaper

"How can you prove that the oak tree is 20 years old?" In the face of such cross-examination, Zheng Min really has a hundred arguments, because he can’t make the oak tree that has been made into a table prove its innocence.

This is not a comedy or a fabricated funny plot, but a real case recently revealed by the media-Zheng Min met a professional counterfeiter. A few days ago, Zheng Min sold an oak table in an online shop. In the product description, he said that this table was "carefully built with 20 years of oak". Subsequently, this sentence was targeted by professional counterfeiters and complained to the e-commerce platform that the seller was suspected of false propaganda.

The participation of the whole people in counterfeiting is an effective channel to control counterfeit and shoddy goods. However, in recent years, a considerable number of professional counterfeiters often take advantage of the loopholes in the shelf life of goods and the description of advertising language, deliberately buy in large quantities, ask merchants to pay compensation, and even become professional claimants. Different from the anti-counterfeiting governance of e-commerce platforms, these professional counterfeiters are usually parasitic on major e-commerce platforms and extort money in the name of anti-counterfeiting, which seriously disrupts the market order. In this regard, the "Legal Daily" reporter conducted an investigation.

Recruit apprentices to impart experience.

Teach anti-counterfeiting as well as anti-counterfeiting

In fact, what Zheng Min people are facing is not the individual counterfeiters, but a huge industrial chain of professional counterfeiting.

After the reporter of Legal Daily entered the word "professional anti-counterfeiting" in the search box of QQ group, a large number of QQ groups named "professional anti-counterfeiting exchange group" and "professional anti-counterfeiting rights protection" appeared immediately, including many paying groups and some large groups with a scale of thousands of people.

After a period of browsing and investigation, the reporter of Legal Daily found that among these professional anti-counterfeiting groups, many so-called "predecessors" will come to chat with you privately as long as they express themselves as a "little white" (newcomer) and seek teaching after joining the group, some just receive simple consultation, while others are for the purpose of "accepting apprentices".

"Apprenticeship" refers to how to teach newcomers how to engage in professional counterfeiting by recruiting apprentices. Through the conversation, the reporter of Legal Daily found that these "predecessors" who recruited apprentices mainly made profits in another form besides counterfeiting. Fees range from 38 yuan to 2000 yuan, and the content of study can be anti-counterfeiting or anti-counterfeiting.

Among them, learning to counterfeit goods can be roughly divided into "food-eating" types that require merchants to refund but not return goods, multiple refund types, and high compensation types that require one fake and ten penalties. In the teaching content, there are also professors’ anti-counterfeiting skills for brands, price differences, materials and authorization certificates.

In some QQ group files, the Legal Daily reporter found a large number of professional anti-counterfeiting tutorials, among which there are files that specifically introduce "slang" in the industry. For example, "getting on the bus" means that others take you to fight against counterfeiting, and "ticket" means that "getting on the bus" means giving money to others as a benefit.

In addition, there are many documents that introduce the operation process of anti-counterfeiting, which describe the process of online anti-counterfeiting in detail, including finding links that may be fakes, talking to customer service, how to take a video of unpacking when receiving goods, how to provide reasonable evidence, and how to apply for a refund. It is accompanied by many laws and regulations, including the consumer rights protection law and the advertising law.

After browsing more than 10 such professional anti-counterfeiting groups, the reporter of Legal Daily noticed that the content of group chat was mainly divided into three categories: accepting apprentice advertisements, making fake proof advertisements and discussing anti-counterfeiting results. In addition, fake links will be shared in the group. According to reports, people with good relationships will send such links in small groups and carry out "counterfeiting" on a small scale. If you send it in a large group of hundreds of people, there may be a rush.

In the eyes of professional counterfeiters, counterfeiting is also a technical activity, and it is necessary to be familiar with advertising law and e-commerce law, and there is a complete set of processes. It is understood that food, clothing, shoes and other industries have different anti-counterfeiting methods, and high-level shop counterfeiters are afraid to go to trouble easily.

In the group, the group owner or "old bird" will "scan" the stores with good sales on the e-commerce platform according to the category. Once a product description is found to be problematic, it will quickly take evidence, and at the same time throw the product link and fake technology into the group, mobilize the professional counterfeiters in the group to place orders, give bad reviews and report after receiving the goods, and then wait for the merchants to lose money.

Abandoning e-commerce and turning to counterfeiting

Apprenticeship fees are expensive

In the anti-counterfeiting group, there are not only "old birds" who are familiar with relevant laws and regulations, but also countless "little whites" who are similar to college students or treasure moms. They just want to earn some extra money through anti-counterfeiting.

In the investigation, the reporter of Legal Daily contacted three so-called "predecessors", nicknamed "Leaves", "Bad Kids" and "Baby".

"Leaves" claimed to be an e-commerce business, but was annoyed by professional counterfeiting, so they spent a lot of money to learn anti-counterfeiting and anti-counterfeiting. Now they have been doing "apprentice" business for 6 years. The anti-counterfeiting platform spans multiple e-commerce platforms. According to the friends in the group, "leaves" are very expensive, at least thousands of dollars.

"Bad kids" said that they wanted more people to know about professional counterfeiting, so "accepting apprentices" was cheaper. After paying the fee, the "bad boy" first sent two documents to the reporter of Legal Daily, namely, Summary of Food Safety Standards Related to Labeling Requirements, and Imported Aloe Beverage will be refunded for one and compensated for ten. The latter is a media report, which tells that the power of returning one to compensate ten points to new resource videos. Some new resource videos were awarded ten times compensation by relevant departments because they did not compile relevant signs in advance.

Later, the "bad boy" sent a tutorial to the reporter of "Legal Daily" about the prohibited items of an e-commerce platform. According to him, searching for contraband and other items on relevant platforms is the easiest to succeed, such as anti-wolf spray, stun guns and so on. According to the specific steps of the demonstration, don’t unpack the package after arrival, and then apply for a refund after recording the unpacking video. At this time, it is only to apply for a refund, and the reason for the refund is contraband. "If the merchant doesn’t handle it, it will be refunded automatically when the time is up. If the merchant refuses to apply for a refund, you can take photos or upload videos, and generally the refund will be processed in two or three days. "

"How do we need to find fakes? The easiest way is to look at the price, and the price of the goods is half that of the authentic flagship store. " "Bad kids" believe that the key elements of "eating goods" are to find links, shoot out-of-the-box videos, provide reasonable evidence and apply for a refund. If you negotiate, it mainly depends on your expressive ability. If the customer service of the e-commerce platform intervenes, it will be required to submit a certificate proving that it is a fake. Then, for example, someone in the comments commented that this is a fake and can also be used as evidence. "

According to the "bad boy", generally speaking, the successful compensation for food is from 500 yuan to 1000 yuan. According to him, many merchants have a guilty conscience. "So, even if the merchants call the police, they don’t have to be afraid. This is rarely the case."

According to "Baby", it is necessary to download two App platforms, "Tianyancha" and "National 12315" first. The former looks for fakes, and the latter complains to merchants. The specific steps of "counterfeiting" include: first, looking for the problematic merchant store, generally there will be photos such as business license in the store, and then compare it with the manufacturer in the product review, and then compare it in the eye check; Later, when communicating with the merchants, relevant laws and regulations will be used. For this reason, "Baby" has listed a number of provisions such as Article 148 of the Food Safety Law in detail, and a series of corresponding legal provisions need to be issued during communication. In addition, it can also threaten merchants to complain to the Food and Drug Administration.

Usual wolf tactics claim

Malicious entanglement routine is full

In recent years, professional counterfeiters have entered the public eye and rapidly developed into a huge group. Nowadays, with the rise of online shopping, the "battlefield" of professional counterfeiters has also expanded from offline stores to online stores.

The "Legal Daily" reporter noticed through several days’ observation that this kind of anti-counterfeiting group is huge and very active. High-level QQ group will also teach the tutorial of making appraisal books, such as "beyond the scope of business, heavy metal pollution, false propaganda, illegal addition" and so on. In view of the anti-counterfeiting of cosmetics stores, the group will also teach to make allergy certificates, so as to touch some shops that have no problems.

At the same time, the "Legal Daily" reporter also found that the group organization of professional anti-counterfeiting is relatively traditional and loose, mainly because the "predecessors" bring new people and go to the "anti-counterfeiting" online store together.

Shortly after the reporter of Legal Daily joined the group, a group administrator posted a shopping link with a high imitation of a famous brand of shoes in the group, indicating that he was going to "drive", greeting interested group members to "get on the bus" and "engage" a seller with him.

The reporter of "Legal Daily" expressed his willingness to "get on the bus" as a newcomer and asked how to operate it. The group administrator said that the "wolf tactics" were used, that is, several people placed orders at the same time, and each person only placed a small order, and then demanded a claim together to threaten to report. Generally, sellers will give money to eliminate disasters, or accept refunds without returning them, thus achieving the purpose of "eating goods". At the same time, the group administrator told the Legal Daily reporter that if he succeeded, he should remember to give him a "ticket" and generously said that he could "get the ticket first", that is, "eat" the goods or get compensation and then give him the corresponding money.

After diving in the QQ group for one night, the reporter of Legal Daily found that people often "drive" in the group. Usually, the routine is for an old hand to post a link in the group that may be fake or unqualified goods, and call on everyone to "get on the bus" to fight counterfeiting together. Many people sign up for each time. The successful person will share the process and experience of fighting counterfeiting in the group, post a chat record with the seller, and "sun" the amount of compensation requested.

According to the introduction of "predecessors", shops such as mobile phones are also easily targeted by professional counterfeiters, mainly checking business licenses, product number, 3C certification and so on. If not, it will be blackmailed. In addition, some well-trained professional anti-counterfeiting teams are also very particular when searching for "prey". Those small shops that apparently sell fake and shoddy products are not within their target range, because once the claim is too high, the boss is likely to close the store directly, and the counterfeiters may lose money for the goods, which is not worth the candle.

Therefore, they mainly focus on those products with higher unit price, such as electronics and furniture. They will choose their explosive products from online stores with better sales volume, and then from industrial and commercial reporting to sending lawyers’ letters to court prosecution, there is a set of assembly line operation process with high success rate and good income every time.

The "Legal Daily" reporter learned that some professional counterfeiters have become alienated and even made fakes in the name of counterfeiting. For example, there are so-called counterfeiters who erase the production date of goods with cotton cloth dipped in special medicine, or put hair into bread with needles to claim compensation from merchants.

Faced with the malicious entanglement of some counterfeiters, can businesses lose money and get things done?

Mr. Zhu is engaged in legal work in an e-commerce enterprise. He has handled a lot of cases about professional counterfeiters. Mr. Zhu told the "Legal Daily" reporter that there are two kinds of routine "routines" for professional counterfeiters: one is to repeatedly purchase claims and share business information, but not to report businesses; The second is to enlarge the limited defects of goods, to report complaints and blackmail, and to achieve the purpose of taking money. Finally, the fake goods in the market are still allowed, or the flaws of the merchants continue to exist. Professional counterfeiters can’t really maintain the order of market operation, and businesses are also facing the possibility of being found by counterfeiters again.

Many people in the industry interviewed believe that most professional counterfeiters are for profit and cannot be regarded as real consumers. Their role in cracking down on counterfeiting and safeguarding public interests is very limited. Moreover, professional claims occupy a lot of administrative and judicial resources, which has a negative impact on normal market supervision.