At the beginning of 2020, when the Hongkou Procuratorate visited a private enterprise in the research area, it received a clue from a clothing company: an Internet celebrity anchor sold counterfeit clothing of the company's brand in the live broadcast room of the e-commerce platform. The procuratorate immediately handed over the clues to the public security organs. After investigation, the public security organs quickly locked in the Internet celebrity anchor Liao Mou. On August 28, 2020, When Liao was live-streaming "bringing fakes" in the live broadcast room, he was taken away by the police on the spot.
The news of "Shanghai cracking the first case of online celebrity live broadcast with fake goods sales" has been a sensation, and the discussion about "live sales of fake goods" has also boiled over. Recently, the Hongkou Procuratorate prosecuted a total of 6 people and 34 related merchants in Liao's team for the crime of selling counterfeit registered trademarks.
In October 2017, Liao signed a contract with a company in Hangzhou to become an anchor with goods, using the account of "Silent Mo07" to open a live broadcast room on the e-commerce platform to sell women's clothing and jewelry. Standing on the cusp of the industry, she has accumulated millions of fans in just 3 years. With the accumulation of fans, Liao has also formed a team of about 6 people with a clear division of labor.
However, from 2020 onwards, in order to obtain a high commission, Liao slowly went astray. There are some "special" goods in her live broadcast room, these clothing LOGO is covered, only implied by words such as "fragrant grandmother" and "donkey family", advertised as "the same model", and the price of the goods is often only a few tens or even a few hundredths of the genuine store, which is obviously a counterfeit product with a luxury label. Every time he cooperates with counterfeit merchants, Liao and his team can get a lot of appearance fees and commission income. In order to avoid risks, after each "fake" live broadcast, the live broadcast team will delete the live broadcast playback.
After review, from March to August 2020, in just half a year, Liao and her team sold counterfeit clothing, jewelry, watches and other goods of Brands such as Dior, CHANEL, LOEWE in a live broadcast, with a sales amount of nearly 700,000 yuan. The Hongkou Procuratorate believes that Liao and her five team members ganged up to violate the national trademark administration laws and regulations and sold goods that they knew were counterfeit registered trademarks, and the sales amount was huge. A few days ago, the Hongkou Procuratorate filed a public prosecution against Liao and his team for the crime of selling counterfeit registered trademark goods. As an anchor, Liao is a communicator in the sale of fakes, and the actual source of goods is still provided by illegal merchants. Five of the merchants cooperating with Liao were found to be suspected of selling counterfeits, and 34 criminal suspects have been prosecuted.
During the review and prosecution stage, a confession by Liao caught the attention of the procuratorate. She said the company also did not have any disciplinary measures against the anchors and teams who sold counterfeits. "We believe that it is not enough to bring the people involved to justice, but to educate and restrain the practitioners from the source." Kong Yan, deputy procurator general of the Hongkou Procuratorate, said that the procuratorate extended its functions to provide Liao's company with an in-depth understanding of the cooperative relationship between the anchor involved in the case and the company, the company's organizational structure, operational content and compliance governance, etc., and analyzed the management loopholes in the company's daily operation on the basis of research and formulated procuratorial suggestions.
On April 25, 2021, Kong Yan led the procurator who undertook the case to Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, to announce the delivery of procuratorial suggestions to the company, suggesting that the company improve the criminal compliance mechanism, promote the enterprise's law-abiding and compliant operation, improve the risk prevention and control system, effectively implement the supervision and management responsibilities, strengthen employee training and education, and guide the establishment of a sense of property rights protection. The company proposed a phased rectification plan for this case, and stated that it would further rectify and implement it according to the procuratorial suggestions delivered by this announcement.
Hu Chunjian, director of the Fourth Procuratorial Department of the Municipal Procuratorate, revealed that as the new format of the Internet celebrity economy matures, the counterfeiting gang has also reached out to this field. "The criminal gang used the 'live streaming with goods' business model, the internal division of labor is clear, several defendants respectively docked with merchants, screened live broadcast goods, arranged anchor schedules, managed live broadcast backstage links, and were responsible for after-sales and fan base maintenance, creating the illusion of formal operation and genuine sales to consumers."
Column Editor-in-Chief: Wang Haiyan Text Editor: Wang Xianle Title Image Source: Figureworm Creative Image Editor: Shao Jing
Source: Author: Wang Xiaole Chen Lan Wang Xiaoyang