(ECNS) -- Chongqing's industry and commerce administrators recently raided a local company that profiteered from hiring part-time employees to register online stores and then sold them to businesspeople who cash in on counterfeit goods online, Beijing Morning Post reports.
Yujiasheng Information Consulting, based in Southwest China metropolis Chongqing, hired within half a year several hundred part-time employees who registered more than 500 stores on Taobao, the country's leading online shopping site. The company then sold these stores to businesspeople in Putian, southeast China's Fujian Province, at a price ranging from 80 ($12) to 200 yuan each.
The head of the company, surnamed Mou, said he began the business in the hope of making fast money after selling a Taobao store to a businessman through an online discussion group for part-time jobs.
"I felt this approach could earn money fast and did not require much effort or pose great risks, so we began to engage in registering Taobao stores and selling them for money," Mou said.
But opening a store via Taobao requires identity certification, which needs the owner's personal information. To meet the requirement, Yujiasheng began to post part-time job ads in schools and communities as well as at online sites. All that the part-time employees needed to provide was their IDs, bank card information and a smartphone that was capable of taking and receiving videos and photos. In return they were paid 40 to 130 yuan a day.
One of the company's part-time employees, a Chongqing college student surnamed Wang, said the company provided each of them with an e-mail address and tutored them in registering online stores using their ID and bank card information. They received 40 yuan for each store successfully registered and more if the store passed Taobao's identity certification, he said.
"We were only responsible for registration and certification matters, and didn't know where the stores were heading," Wang said.
The raid on the company's office jointly conducted by Chongqing's Nanan district administration for industry and commerce and police found more than 10 computers, several workers and large amounts of personal information on netizens including names, ages, ID numbers, cell phone numbers, Alipay online payment accounts and QQ instant messaging accounts.
Administrators also found that most of Mou's online stores were sold to businesses in Putian, the majority of them selling counterfeit goods, especially clothes, shoes and hats, the paper reported. Two of the stores registered by Yujiasheng were suspected of fraud, with investigations still underway.
Mou said a businessman surnamed Jiang in Futian bought more than 100 stores from his company at 80 yuan each. Within half a year, most of the more than 500 stores he registered that passed certification were sold, it was dded.
Newly registered online stores usually sold for about 100 yuan each, but those that passed Taobao identity certification or earned merits through false transactions could sell for 2,000 to 3,000 yuan each.
Yu Xuejun, a Beijing-based lawyer, said the most pressing issue was to define the true and legal efforts of online stores to make real-name registration work correctly and protect consumer rights.
In June, Taobao began to ban businesspeople that change identities to reopen stores that were previously shut down due to fraud or selling shoddy or counterfeit products. If successful, the program that began by covering deals purporting to offer fresh cherries for sale online, would be expanded to all categories of businesses on the site.
