"A pure woman strayed into the depths of the Daliang Mountains and met a handsome and honest country boy. She warmly invited her to her home..." In August 2022, the video of Zhao Ling'er and Qu Bu's "encounter" quickly became popular on the Internet. Both of their accounts have more than 2 million followers. After that, the two began to live broadcast frequently to bring goods, starting a "beautiful story" that seemed full of positive energy to help farmers and start a business.
However, behind this lies a gray industrial chain of counterfeiting, incubating internet celebrities with fake personas, compiling plots and shooting videos, and then monetizing back-end agricultural product supply traffic.
On September 20 this year, Liangshan Prefecture, Sichuan Province held a press conference to report on the case of live streaming of goods by Internet celebrities with "Qu Bu" and "Zhao Ling'er" as the main representative teams. This is the first case of "Internet celebrities" cracked by Liangshan police in the province. Economic Chaos Project.
Under the banners of "helping farmers" and "high-quality original ecology", this team sold fake Daliangshan agricultural specialties to more than 20 provinces across the country, with sales exceeding 10 million. In just a few months, Zhang, the owner of the Internet celebrity company behind the team, made illegal profits of more than 3 million yuan, and the illegal income of the two anchors was more than 700,000 yuan. In July 2023, Zhang and many other suspects were arrested on suspicion of counterfeiting registered trademarks and false advertising.
On December 29, 2023, a reporter from Red Star News learned from an interview that on December 28, the People’s Court of Zhaojue County, Liangshan Prefecture pronounced the first instance verdict on the case. The legal representative of the company involved in the case Zhang, Internet celebrity anchor Zhao (Zhao Linger), A Ri Nine people including a certain (Qu Bu) were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from 8 months to 3 years and 2 months.
became popular:
Two anchors "encountered" each other in the mountains
once responded that there was no company packaging, and both account fans exceeded 2 million
23-year-old Qu Bu and 27-year-old Zhao Ling'er are a pair of young men and women from Liangshan. The popularity of the two stems from a short video of "accidental encounter": On August 19, 2022, Zhao Ling'er released a video on a short video platform, telling the story of her "accidental encounter" with Qubu, a simple and handsome young man from the Yi ethnic group in a remote mountain village in Liangshan. , and cordially invited him to his home as a guest.
It was this "accidental encounter" video that made Qubu and Zhao Ling'er become popular online overnight and appeared on the platform's hot search list many times. Facing doubts from netizens, Zhao Ling'er once released a video in response, saying that she and Qu Bu met by chance, just to record rural life. "There is no team, let alone the capital and packaging of big companies as everyone said..." Soon after
became popular, The two began to carry out frequent live broadcasts, mainly selling agricultural products such as walnuts and honey. Red Star News reporters noted that as of the time of the incident, Zhao Ling'er's video account had 2.72 million followers, and Qubu's had 2.16 million followers. From September 2022 to May 2023, Zhao Ling'er and Qu Bu conducted more than 40 live broadcasts.
In a video of two people selling goods live, Zhao Linger claimed: "This honey is really cheap at 98 yuan. The walnuts are really our walnuts from Daliang Mountain. Qubu and I will not do anything unconscionable. We are real." ." In just one minute, more than 2,000 kilograms of walnuts were swept away by netizens.
▲Internet celebrity anchors Zhao Linger and Qu Bu sold honey in the live broadcast
However, there is a little-known secret hidden behind this... In May 2023, the Liangshan Public Security Bureau received a notification from the State Market Supervision Bureau and discovered that Internet celebrity Liangshan Qubu , Zhao Ling'er falsely promoted during the live broadcast process, the amount involved was huge, and she was suspected of committing a crime. After receiving the clues, the public security organs quickly set up a task force to carry out investigation.
Revealed:
mcn organization looks for "Internet celebrity seedlings" to incubate
design scripts to harvest traffic and monetize, involving more than 10 million
With the in-depth investigation by the police of the Zhaojue County Public Security Bureau in Liangshan, a gray industrial chain of manufacturing and selling counterfeit goods has surfaced. After investigation, Zhang established Chengdu Xiaoyu Zhunong Media Co., Ltd. (mcn organization) with the purpose of incubating Internet celebrities and monetizing goods through live broadcasts. In July 2022, Zhang went to Liangshan to find local "Internet celebrity seedlings" such as Zhao (Zhao Ling'er), an individual business owner, and Ari (Qubu), a young man, and began to carefully incubate them.
The policeman handling the case told the Red Star News reporter that Zhang used carefully designed scripts and words to create innocent and kind-hearted "heroine" and "heroine" images for the two, and published plots such as "accidental encounter", "starting a business" and "helping farmers" His short videos attracted attention and spawned two internet celebrity accounts, Zhao Ling'er and Qu Bu, both with more than 2 million fans.
▲Before the incident, anchors Zhao Linger and Qubu both had more than 2 million fans
The team specially selected local uninhabited production houses, dilapidated buildings, etc. as the background of the live broadcast, in the name of "helping farmers" and "high-quality original ecology" " and other banners, purchased honey, walnuts and other agricultural and sideline products from food companies in Chengdu, Nanjing and other places at low prices, carried out online live broadcasts, and sold fake Daliangshan agricultural specialties to more than 20 provinces across the country, with sales exceeding 10 million yuan , forming a gray industrial chain.
Gumo Village, Tebulo Township, Zhaojue County, Liangshan, is where Zhao Linger and Qu Bu shot the video. Recently, local villagers told Red Star News reporters that in the second half of last year, a group of people who filmed videos and did live broadcasts came to the village, claiming to be here to help them sell agricultural products, including Zhao Linger and Qu Bu. They sometimes invite villagers to shoot with them and give them something or money.
"When they came, they looked for old houses in the mountains to shoot. After these houses were relocated to new houses for poverty alleviation, they were abandoned and no one lived in them." Villager Hai Laihaqu recalled that few of the people who took the videos had the same relationship with the village. People communicated, "One day the lights in the unoccupied old house suddenly turned on, and I realized that they were filming a live video there."
Progress:
"False farmers" account has been permanently banned
First-instance judgment: Legal representative of the company And many anchors were sentenced
Red Star News reporters learned from interviews that the more than 20,000 kilograms of honey and more than 94,000 kilograms of walnuts involved in the case of Zhao Ling'er and Qu Bu were almost all purchased from other places at low prices, passed off as inferior, and sold at high prices. They were really from There are only a few original high-quality products in Liangshan. According to Guo, a supplier to the team, "The purpose of purchasing a small amount of honey from Gumo Village in Zhaojue County is to obtain a local certificate of origin to prove that the place of origin comes from Daliang Mountain."
The story is false and the agricultural assistance is false, deceiving consumers. Making illegal profits is real. According to the policeman handling the case, the foreign honey sold by the team came in a 500-gram bottle and was purchased at a low price. After being labeled with the original ecological label of Daliang Mountain, each bottle sold for 98 yuan, which can be said to be a huge profit. In just a few months, the company run by Zhang made illegal profits of more than 3 million yuan, and Internet celebrity anchors Zhao Linger and Qu Bu each made illegal profits of more than 700,000 yuan.
Red Star News reporter learned that in July 2023, the People’s Procuratorate of Zhaojue County, Liangshan Prefecture prosecuted Zhang, the legal representative of Chengdu Xiaoyu Zhunong Media Co., Ltd., Shuai, the operator, and Xu, Internet celebrity anchors Zhao, Ari, Shi Yi, Zhong, counterfeit goods supplier Guo and other suspects approved the arrest.
Currently, the relevant accounts involved in the case have been banned.
It is reported that since the beginning of this year, Liangshan has launched a special campaign to rectify "self-media" chaos. It has dealt with 346 illegal accounts and permanently closed 82 accounts such as "Yunnan Bobo" and "Mountain Village Old Man" who were "disastrous at auctions", and permanently closed " There are 15 accounts such as "Zhao Linger", "Qubu" and "Liangshan Mengyang", including "False to Help Farmers", including 5 accounts with more than 2 million followers.
On December 29, a Red Star News reporter learned about the latest developments in the case. On December 28, the People's Court of Zhaojue County, Liangshan pronounced the first instance verdict on the case in accordance with the law. Zhang, the legal representative of Chengdu Xiaoyu Zhunong Media Co., Ltd., was guilty of counterfeiting. For the crime of registered trademark and false advertising, he was sentenced to 3 years and 2 months in prison and fined 250,000 yuan; Guo was sentenced to 3 years in prison and fined 200,000 yuan for the crime of counterfeiting a registered trademark; Internet celebrity anchor Zhao (Zhao Linger), Ari (Qubu), Shi Yi, Zhong, Shuai, Xu and others were convicted of false advertising and were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from 8 months to 10 months. and fines ranging from 20,000 yuan to 100,000 yuan.
According to Red Star News
