Counterfeiting regular journals to solicit papers, and printing counterfeit journals without permission, some criminals are eyeing the demand market for academic journal papers, and breeding a huge "illegal industrial chain" of illegal journals. Recently, the Jingmen police in Hubei Province successfully cracked a huge illegal periodical case involving an amount of up to 150 million yuan.
150 million yuan involved in the case!
Counterfeit regular journal solicitation of papers
It is difficult to distinguish the authenticity of the fake periodicals carefully concocted by the criminals, and these fake periodicals in the hands of the police are only the tip of the iceberg in this case of illegally operating periodicals, which also started with the report of a man in Jingmen City, Hubei Province.
Xiong Daxu, Captain of the Economic Crime Investigation Brigade of the High-tech Zone and Daodao District Bureau of the Jingmen Municipal Public Security Bureau: He said that he spent 5,000 yuan on the Internet and found someone to help him distribute his papers. But at that time, it was agreed that it would be published within a month, but now three months have passed and it has not been published.
According to the whistleblower Li, he spent money to buy a page fee for one of his papers, but the magazine failed to publish the paper as promised. The police checked the situation and found that the matter was not as simple as Li said.
Sun Yang, Deputy Captain of the Economic Crime Investigation Brigade of the High-tech Zone and Daodao District Bureau of the Jingmen Public Security Bureau: According to our investigation, the actual author of the paper is Xiang. Then when we asked Li about these situations, Li was hesitant and may have concealed some facts.
It turned out that Li was a so-called paper publication agent, and he charged the author of the paper a paper publication fee of 5,000 yuan to a certain person, and promised to publish the paper in a journal for Xiang X. After Li left 1,000 yuan for the intermediary fee, he handed over the remaining 4,000 yuan to the upstream agent who was also engaged in the intermediary of paper publishing. It wasn't until the publication of the paper fell into the sea that Li suspected that he had been deceived, so he was forced to call the police.
Li: First of all, the customer has to pay us, and then we make the difference in the middle. The money would go to our house, and then he would get the money and publish it for us.
Through further investigation, the police found that Li had been engaged in the intermediary business of paper distribution for many years. In a cultural company run by Li, the police seized a large amount of illegal evidence.
Wu Jun, Director of the Jingmen Municipal Public Security Bureau High-tech Zone and Daodao District Bureau: Through investigation, we found that there is a huge chain of interests hidden behind this case. Then we quickly connected with the local propaganda department and the anti-pornography and anti-illegal activities office, we were responsible for the investigation, and they were responsible for the identification of illegal periodicals in the case.
According to the analysis of the Jingmen police, there may be a "black interest chain" behind this case, which is equal to illegal editing, printing, and sales. Therefore, the police force was immediately dispatched and a special case team was set up to investigate.
Xiong Daxu, Captain of the Economic Crime Investigation Brigade of the High-tech Zone and Daodao District Bureau of the Jingmen Public Security Bureau: We found that one of Li's WeChat friends is called "Editor Guo", which is his upline. So let's follow this "Guo Editor" to investigate downward.
The police investigation found that the real identity of the so-called "editor Guo" was Gao, who ran a so-called magazine in Zhoukou City, Henan Province.
Sun Yang, Deputy Captain of the Economic Crime Investigation Brigade of the High-tech Zone and Daodao District Bureau of the Jingmen Municipal Public Security Bureau: They rented an office in an office building in Zhoukou, Henan Province, and set up a studio by themselves.
Uncover the operation routines of fake magazines
In the magazine run by the criminal suspect Gao, the police seized more than 200 mobile phones and more than 30 computers at the scene, and seized more than 400 illegal periodicals.
According to the police investigation, the criminal suspects Gao and Chen used intermediaries to collect paper manuscripts across provinces, illegally engaged in journal manuscript collection business activities, and charged publication fees to the authors of the papers at prices ranging from 2,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan per paper. From November 2021 to April 2023, the two collected a total of more than 17 million yuan in so-called page fees.
In addition, after Gao and others collected the papers, they would also send the manuscripts to a cultural communication company in Yunnan Province, print and publish fake journals, and then hand them over to the authors of the papers. After grasping the relevant clues, the police of the special case group immediately rushed to Yunnan.
Luo Cheng, Deputy Director of the Propaganda Department of the Jingmen Municipal Party Committee: In a very hidden drawer at the scene, I found a drawer full of illegal and counterfeit seals, which had the official seals of academic journal publishers across the country, as well as the press and publication departments of quite a number of provinces and cities.
According to the police investigation, this cultural communication company in Yunnan is a fake journal den headed by six suspects, including Zhan and Dao.
- Without applying for a journal publishing license, they counterfeited dozens of periodicals that had been discontinued or were very unpopular, and after editing and typesetting, they handed them over to five people, including Bai and Zhang, from Langfang City, Hebei Province, for film production, printing, and binding, and then courier delivery to the authors of the papers.
Xiong Daxu, Captain of the Economic Crime Investigation Brigade of the High-tech Zone and Daodao District Bureau of the Jingmen Municipal Public Security Bureau: I found that in this short period of one or two years, they illegally collected about 30,000 or 40,000 papers, and the fees collected for profits involved about 150 million yuan.
In June 2023, the police of the task force rushed to Langfang City, Hebei Province, and arrested 5 people including Bai and Zhang, who were engaged in illegal printing business.
So, how did these fake periodicals published by the suspects deceive others into trusting?
- It turned out that in order to make these fake journals real and cover up people's eyes, Zhan, Dao and others contacted the website of a journal in Beijing and posted the papers published in the fake journals on the Internet for the authors of the papers to query.
Pan Mou, an executive of this journal website, and the other two privately used the website to collect and upload papers provided by the other party without knowing that the other party was an illegal journal, and collected more than 3 million yuan in so-called "data processing fees" from them.
So far, a "black interest chain" that integrates illegal editing, printing, and sales has been completely broken through by the Jingmen police, and all 16 criminal suspects involved in the case have been arrested, and more than 3,000 copies of more than 30 kinds of counterfeit periodicals have been seized in the case. At present, the case has been transferred to the procuratorate for review and prosecution.
Qi Xing, Chief of the Press and Publication Section of the Propaganda Department of the Jingmen Municipal Party Committee: Judging from the journals we have confiscated, most of them are academic journals in the field of medical architecture. The relevant experimental data and academic opinions have not been certified and reviewed by authoritative departments. If the data were to be cited in the real world, it would be catastrophic.