The use of a certain brand of hair removal device can lead to blindness, and may also cause miscarriage of pregnant women, recently, a tweet with a "quality inspection report" attracted attention, causing more than 60 million yuan of losses to the company. On April 17, upstream news reporters learned from the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau that after investigation, the tweet was deliberately smeared by competitors, not only falsifying the quality inspection report, but also spending money to find self-media.
After investigation, the quality inspection report was forged. Image source/Shanghai Police
According to the police handling the case, recently, an e-commerce company in Shanghai reported to the police that a well-known self-media account posted that the company's brand hair removal device has potential safety hazards and quality problems, which may lead to blindness, genetic mutations, miscarriages and other serious consequences after use. The article is also accompanied by a "quality inspection report" issued by an authoritative testing agency, showing that the brand hair removal device has two unqualified test indicators. After the tweet attracted attention, the company's brand hair removal device was removed from the shelves on an e-commerce platform, the live broadcast event was canceled, and a large number of customers returned the goods, causing huge losses. The reporting company said that the content of the online article did not match the facts. The police handling the case said.
After receiving the report, the Economic Investigation Corps of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau set up a special team to carry out an investigation. The police were divided into two ways, and the investigators found the author of the article, Wang. Wang said that he was entrusted by Yu Mou, a self-media practitioner, to write and publish the article and received a remuneration of 15,000 yuan. Yu said that he was at the request of Zhou, the deputy general manager of an e-commerce company, and entrusted Wang to write an article. Zhou once provided him with a commodity quality inspection report, asking Yu to find someone to write an article and publish hype based on the report, saying that he would pay 200,000 yuan after the matter was completed.
Another investigator went to the authoritative testing agency mentioned in the article to investigate and found that the agency had not tested the hair removal device product of this brand, nor had it ever issued any test report, and the test report in the article was forged.
The content of the tweet is deliberately smeared by the opponent. Image source/Shanghai Police
After further investigation by the police, it was found that the e-commerce company where he worked was a domestic agent distributor of another brand of hair removal device, and it was also the main market competitor of the hair removal device of the company that reported the crime. Zhou and Chen, the general manager of the company, in order to achieve the purpose of attacking competitors and maliciously smearing each other, collaborated with others to forge two false quality inspection reports for the hair removal device of the company's brand, and then contacted Yu, a self-media practitioner, and asked him to find someone to write an article and expose and hype it through the online platform. In order to achieve illegal purposes, Zhou also revised the articles written by Wang many times to ensure that his expected goals were achieved.
According to the relevant data of the e-commerce platform, the release of the false article brought adverse effects such as the removal of goods from the shelves and the increase in the return rate to the reporting company, resulting in a direct economic loss of more than 6,000 yuan to the reporting company.
After the suspect was arrested, he admitted to his smear acts. Image source/Shanghai Police
The police handling the case said that in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Criminal Law, fabricating and disseminating false facts, harming the commercial reputation and reputation of others, causing major losses to others, or other serious circumstances, constitutes the crime of harming commercial reputation and commodity reputation. In this case, the criminal suspects Chen and Zhou forged false quality inspection reports and instructed others to write and disseminate them, causing huge losses to the reporting company, which has been suspected of damaging business reputation and commodity reputation. At present, the two criminal suspects have been taken criminal compulsory measures by the police in accordance with the law, and the case has entered the court trial stage.
The relevant person in charge of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau told upstream news reporters that the case is one of the typical cases in which the Shanghai police piloted the establishment of the "Blue Whale" enterprise protection workstation and the opening of the "Shanghai Enterprise Butler Protecting the Enterprise with Me" online window to provide legal services to enterprises. Since the beginning of this year, the city's public security organs have successfully cracked more than 170 cases of internal duty crimes such as embezzlement, commercial bribery, and misappropriation of funds, and more than 300 cases of external infringement such as infringement of intellectual property rights.
Source: Upstream News