A Chinese network has been identified as the mastermind behind one of the world’s largest online scams, according to an international investigation by The Guardian, Die Zeit, and Le Monde. The scam involved creating a vast network of fake online designer shops that lured customers with deep discounts on brands like Dior, Nike, Lacoste, Hugo Boss, Versace, and Prada.
The scam was highly organized and technically savvy, operating on an industrial scale with over 76,000 fake websites created. The websites, published in multiple languages, were designed to trick shoppers into parting with their money and sensitive personal data. However, these sites had no connection to the brands they claimed to sell, and most customers reported receiving no items after payment.
The operation began in 2015, and in the past three years alone, more than 1 million “orders” have been processed. While not all payments were successfully processed, the group may have attempted to take as much as €50m (£43m) over the period. An estimated 800,000 people, almost all of them in Europe and the US, have shared their email addresses, with 476,000 of them having shared debit and credit card details, including their three-digit security number. All of them also handed over their names, phone numbers, email, and postal addresses to the network.
Despite the scale of the operation, many of the fake shops have been abandoned, but a third of them – more than 22,500 – are still live.
Read more: www.theguardian.com