first forged a false quality inspection report, and then wrote an article on We Media to "expose" it, causing a direct economic loss of more than 60 million yuan to the rival company. Recently, Shanghai police uncovered a case that damaged business reputation and product reputation.
According to the police, an e-commerce company in Shanghai reported a case, saying that a well-known self-media account posted an article claiming that the company's brand hair removal device had safety hazards and quality problems, and that use may lead to serious consequences such as blindness, genetic mutation, and miscarriage in pregnant women. The article is also accompanied by a "quality inspection report" issued by an authoritative testing agency, which shows that the brand's hair removal device failed two test indicators.
This article triggered a heated discussion on the Internet, causing the company's brand hair removal device to be removed from an e-commerce platform, the live broadcast event was canceled, and a large number of customers returned goods, causing huge losses. The company said the content of the online article was inconsistent with the facts. After receiving the report, the Economic Investigation Corps of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau immediately set up a task force to conduct an investigation.
The police were divided into two groups. Along the way, investigators found Wang, the author of the article. Wang said that he was commissioned by Yu, a self-media practitioner, to write and publish the article and received a remuneration of 15,000 yuan. Yu said that he commissioned Wang to write the article at the request of Zhou, the deputy general manager of an e-commerce company. Zhou once provided him with a product quality inspection report and asked Yu to find someone to write an article based on the report and publish a hype, saying that he would be paid 200,000 yuan in compensation after the report was completed.
Screenshot of a self-media "exposed" online article (photo provided by the police)
Another investigator went to the authoritative testing agency mentioned in the article to investigate and found that the agency had not tested the brand's hair removal device products and had never issued a certificate. There is no test report. The so-called test report in the article is fake.
Forged quality inspection report (photo provided by the police)
After further investigation by the police, it was discovered that the e-commerce company he worked for was the domestic agent distributor of another brand of hair removal equipment, and was also the main market for hair removal equipment owned by the reporting company. competitors. In order to attack competitors and maliciously smear each other, Zhou and Chen, the general manager of the company, together with others forged two false quality inspection reports on the brand hair removal devices of the reporting company, and then contacted Yu, a self-media practitioner, to request They find people to write articles and expose and hype them through online platforms. In order to achieve illegal purposes, Zhou also modified the article written by Wang many times to ensure that it achieved its expected goals.
The police collected relevant data from the e-commerce platform and showed that the publication of the false article did bring adverse effects to the reporting company, such as the removal of products from the shelves and an increase in the return rate, resulting in a direct economic loss of more than 60 million yuan to the reporting company.
At present, two criminal suspects, Chen and Zhou, have been subject to criminal coercive measures by the police, and the case has entered the court trial stage.
According to Shanghai police, since the beginning of this year, the city’s public security organs have successfully detected more than 170 cases of internal job-related crimes such as job embezzlement, commercial bribery, and misappropriation of funds, and more than 300 cases of external infringement such as intellectual property infringement, and organized special actions to focus on We cracked down on "routine recruitment" contract fraud crimes targeting small, medium and micro enterprises, and protected the employment safety of more than 2,800 small, medium and micro enterprises.
