Chinese Network Behind One of World’s ‘Largest Online Scams’
fliptop writes:
More than 800,000 people in Europe and the US appear to have been duped into sharing card details and other sensitive personal data with a vast network of fake online designer shops apparently operated from China:
An international investigation by the Guardian, Die Zeit and Le Monde gives a rare inside look at the mechanics of what the UK's Chartered Trading Standards Institute has described as one of the largest scams of its kind, with 76,000 fake websites created.
A trove of data examined by reporters and IT experts indicates the operation is highly organised, technically savvy - and ongoing.
Operating on an industrial scale, programmers have created tens of thousands of fake web shops offering discounted goods from Dior, Nike, Lacoste, Hugo Boss, Versace and Prada, as well as many other premium brands.
[...] The first fake shops in the network appear to have been created in 2015. More than 1m "orders" have been processed in the past three years alone, according to analysis of the data. Not all payments were successfully processed, but analysis suggests the group may have attempted to take as much as 50m (43m) over the period. Many shops have been abandoned, but a third of them - more than 22,500 - are still live.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.