Shenzhen big sellers need to report to the police

According to preliminary estimates, China's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports will reach 2.38 trillion yuan in 2023, up 15.6%, of which exports will reach 1.83 trillion yuan, up 19.6%.

As cross-border e-commerce is "surging" forward , capital and cross-border e-commerce companies are placing bets one after another. At the same time, some people with ill intentions are also taking action.

Criminals use the name of Shenzhen Dama to defraud

Recently, Shenzhen's popular company Tongtuo Technology has been frequently discussed. First, Huakai Yibai planned to take over Huading Shares and acquire 100% of Tongtuo Technology's equity and all operating assets related to its main business. Now, criminals are using the company's name to commit fraud.

Recently, Tongtuo Technology said it had received a report that criminals had impersonated the company and committed fraud by claiming to provide training on opening and operating cross-border stores.

Moreover, the "scammer" also forged the official seal of Tongtuo Technology and privately printed the contract. Tongtuo Technology believes that these actions are extremely bad and have seriously infringed its brand reputation and the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, so it has made the following three statements:

1. Tongtuo Technology has not conducted any external training and enrollment in the name of "Tongtuo Cross-border College", nor has it authorized any third party or individual to conduct related business. Any training activities claimed by any individual or third-party organization to be conducted on its behalf are illegal and have nothing to do with it.

2. Tongtuo Technology uses public accounts to collect payments for external cooperation and will not use personal accounts.

3. Regarding the acts of criminals who use the name of Tongtuo Technology to carry out training, operation, and enrollment fraud, it will report the case to the public security organs in accordance with the law and hold the relevant personnel accountable for their legal responsibilities.

At the same time, it also reminds consumers and customers to pay attention to raising their awareness of prevention, carefully identify the other party's identity, do not transfer money easily, and be careful to avoid being deceived and causing property losses.

This type of fraud using the names of familiar brands has been on the rise in recent years. Previously, Yien.com published an article titled "Five Shenzhen "Well-known Cross-border Companies" were involved in a fraud storm, defrauding tens of millions of dollars in a few months. " Criminals "affiliate" with big cross-border brands to gain trust with the brand identity, and then use social media platforms such as WeChat to advertise and attract traffic, such as "Unemployed people at home, make thousands of yuan a day by doing TikTok", "Newbies make short videos overseas for a month, and achieve financial freedom with no foundation", etc., and finally lead people into the fan group for "harvesting".

In fact, in recent years, it is not uncommon to see cases of fraud disguised as "cross-border e-commerce". The core of all these cases is fraud, but the "disguise" may be different and will change in real time with hot topics.

Scammers create a large number of fictitious cross-border e-commerce websites

Last July, CCTV Legal Online reported such a news: A lady surnamed Wang rented an electronic store of a technology company to do cross-border e-commerce business under the recommendation of a salesperson of the company. The salesperson promised that after renting the store, the company would take care of it, and then Ms. Wang could "make money lying down". But later, the company not only did not return the profits, but also required Ms. Wang to continue to pay for the purchases. After repeated consideration, Ms. Wang had the idea of ​​quitting, but was told that she was in breach of contract and refused to refund. Ms. Wang then realized that she had been deceived and quickly called the police.

The police later found out that this was a criminal gang that used a " technology company " as a disguise and carried out fraud under the guise of " cross-border e-commerce agency operation " . The first step of this gang's fraud was to lure the victim to a fake website to open a store.

Generally speaking, these fake websites can be divided into two categories: one is similar to the above, using well-known platforms to gain trust and then commit fraud; the other is to directly fabricate a so-called "cross-border e-commerce platform", but in reality this platform does not exist at all.

The first type of situation was more common in the past two years. Amazon, eBay, Shopee and other well-known platforms have been "borrowed" by scammers. Not long ago, there was news that someone used multiple links similar to eBay's official domain names, such as ebaysmalls.top, eBaytop.cyou, and eBaysmall.world , to confuse novice sellers to join. Sellers who are not familiar with the cross-border e-commerce industry have been scammed in large numbers and have lost a lot of money.

The second type of situation has also emerged in recent years, and Yien.com has also reported on it. For example , Starday and SUEZ belong to this category. This type of platform does not have the "big platform halo" of the former , so it packages itself. For example, SUEZ has a very big name, that is, it is a company listed on the Shanghai Equity Exchange Center, and a foreigner is the financial director. But the fact is that a company with less than two years of operation cannot be listed on the Shanghai Equity Exchange Center. According to Qichacha, SUEZ's parent company, Zhejiang Suyisi E-Commerce Co., Ltd., was established in March 2023, less than a year ago.

Although these people's "scams" are varied, they all start with "baiting". They will advertise a lot on self-media or third-party organizations: "You can do cross-border e-commerce at zero cost", "You can easily make money without investing much", "You can do cross-border e-commerce with zero foundation, no need to stock up, no store deposit, and earn 100,000 yuan a month"...

Many people thought this was a good way to make money, but once they stepped in, they found it was an endless abyss.

The black hand began to reach out to the wind outlet platform

There is no doubt that Temu and TikTok shop are two new outlets in the cross-border e-commerce industry. Temu estimates that it will achieve a GMV of US$14 billion in 2023. At the same time, it is reported that Temu has set a GMV target of US$30 billion for 2024, which is more than double this year.

Earlier, there were reports that TikTok has set a grand goal for 2023: TikTok's e-commerce GMV target is US$20 billion , a four-fold increase in size. Not long ago, foreign media reported that TikTok expects to expand its e-commerce business in the United States 10 times to US$17.5 billion in 2024.

In this situation, scammers also heard the news. Yien.com observed that in the comment section of relevant articles and videos on these platforms, there are often comments like this: We have been doing this for half a year and it is doing very well, or I have been doing this for more than a year and made a lot of money.

Seeing this kind of comments, some people who are eager to make money or curious will contact the user. After gaining attention, they will guide users to participate in free live public classes every night, and then set up traps step by step to "swallow" the money of these users.

Not long ago, someone exposed a scam of this kind. Xiao Chen (pseudonym) said that he participated in a live broadcast introducing the Tiktok cross-border e-commerce training course at the end of December last year. During the process, he was infected by the success story of the so-called "teacher", and then passionately placed an order and bought a course with a total price of nearly 4,000 yuan. Later, he was deceived by the other party and bought an unmanned live broadcast equipment with a total price of nearly 13,000 yuan. But a few days after this expenditure, the relevant contact person could no longer be contacted.

Judging from the relevant comments, there are many people who have the same experience as him.

Tongtuo Technology