A furniture online store in Longquan, Zhejiang province, was targeted by malicious “water army” who placed fake orders, resulting in a loss of 110,000 yuan within two hours.
Shop owner Mrs. Liu recently told mainland news that one day earlier this year, her online store received nearly 200 orders within an hour and a half. These orders were quickly followed by refund requests claiming the seller refused to ship the goods, leading to a loss of 110,000 yuan in less than two hours. Mrs. Liu was left baffled by the incident.
“Mind went blank, money lost, tens of thousands gone in an instant,” she said. The 110,000 yuan loss was equivalent to several months’ income for her. Facing so many refund requests in such a short period was an unprecedented experience for them.
According to the rules of the online shopping platform, if the seller “refuses to ship,” it automatically triggers a compensation mechanism with a refund amount of 30% of the product’s value, up to a maximum of 500 yuan. Mrs. Liu discovered that the requested compensations were for their most expensive furniture items, with the final compensation amounts received by buyers close to 500 yuan. All these buyers were from the same province.
However, police investigations revealed that these “water army” accounts had IPs distributed nationwide, and the delivery addresses were just a facade in remote areas. Their goal was to trigger the compensation mechanism by claiming the seller “refused to ship,” for illegal profit.
Reportedly, this is a new “business strategy” developed by mainland “water armies.” They illegally acquire multiple platform accounts, maliciously place orders on e-commerce platforms, exploit loopholes in platform reimbursement rules to deceive refunds, causing direct economic losses to many e-commerce platform sellers. One of the main suspects, Mr. Tang, made illegal profits of over a million yuan in just three months.
The modus operandi of the water army is each group establishing its own WeChat and QQ groups to share so-called business clues and operations. With hundreds of members in each group, “If someone finds a store where they can gain profits, they will share the information in the group. This link requires money to access,” said a police officer from Jianchi Police Station in Longquan City, Zhejiang province, revealing how Mrs. Liu’s online store became a target of online “water army” attacks.
Such dark transactions have become increasingly common in recent years in mainland China.
In March this year, a WeChat mini-program named “Certain Team” recruited people nationwide as “online water army” claiming to make money while lying down. Since March 2022, this group had helped over a thousand merchants on various platforms with fake orders and positive reviews, manipulating the review ratings, with involved amounts totaling one hundred million yuan.
Additionally, a “water army” group was seen in Suining, Sichuan province, offering small gifts to elderly people on the streets to deceive personal information opening accounts on online platforms, aiding platform merchants in “manipulating reviews and quantity” for rebates, involving amounts exceeding two million yuan.
The incident has sparked concerns online. Many netizens have expressed their thoughts, “Running a business is not easy these days, as one must guard against malicious fake buyers and be wary of new tactics by the ‘wool party’! Hope that platforms and laws can better protect legitimate operators, making the online environment cleaner.,” “They’ve been fighting the water army for years, why are there still so many?”, “Platforms should monitor accounts with frequent refunds,” and “Platforms should bear responsibility for their loopholes.”