Recently, Wenzhou Ruian Court concluded a fraud case of using the Meituan takeaway platform to apply for an early refund to defraud the Meituan platform of more than 450,000 yuan, and sentenced the defendant Xu to 7 years in prison.
Case review
Xu joined a sushi restaurant in Rui 'an. One day, several customers reported to Xu that they had received the takeaway, but they also received the refund of the order. After learning about Xu, it turned out that the head office of Sushi Store logged into Xu's merchant account without authorization and unilaterally canceled Xu's order. However, it was difficult for Meituan Platform to understand the actual situation of the order and directly paid the money placed by the customer. The business of sushi restaurants is not good, and it suddenly occurred to Xu that if the Meituan platform is used to apply for refunds for customers, this mechanism may be a way to "get rich".
In March 2020, Xu himself acted as a customer and placed 20 cakes with a unit price of more than 200 yuan in his shop through the Meituan takeaway platform. After Xu received the order, the goods of this order were not made, and the rider who came to pick up the goods was told that "the merchant will deliver the goods himself, and the rider can directly open it". Three days later, on the settlement date of funds between Meituan Platform and the merchants (after the customer places an order, Meituan Platform will temporarily withhold the order amount, deduct the platform handling fee after three days, and then send the remaining funds to the merchants), Xu logs into the customer account after receiving the settlement payment paid by Meituan, and cancels the order for reasons such as "too long waiting time and too slow delivery". Meituan platform advanced the order amount to the customer account in advance, allowing Xu Chenggong to defraud more than 4,000 yuan.
After tasting the sweetness of the first fake account, Xu also found a problem, that is, Meituan Platform will deduct the amount in the merchant's account after prepaying the payment, and then complete the normal order. When the fund settlement date with Meituan Platform is reached, the platform will first make up the amount paid once, and will not hit the merchant's account again. At the same time, the backstage customer service of Meituan will also contact Xu to make up the payment paid by the platform in time.
On the one hand, Xu is worried that the normal profit will be deducted, on the other hand, he is worried that closing the store directly will make the Meituan platform suspect that things are exposed, so he tries to shorten the business hours of the crime shop and reduce operating losses. At the same time, in order to continue to deliver fake orders, Xu racked his brains to launch a number of new stores or use shops that his friends no longer operate to carry out the above operations.
Because Meituan Platform stipulated that the unit price of goods should not exceed that of 500 yuan, Xu changed the unit price of goods to be between 400 yuan and 500 yuan, and placed an order for 50 to 100 with the account of a friend or clerk. Within half a year, Xu * * * placed an order in 10 store, and the total amount of each store was about 50,000 yuan.
In June 2020, Xu was arrested by the public security organs.
It was found that from March to September, 2020, Xu * * * defrauded a technology company in Beijing, the founder of Meituan Platform, of an advance payment of 452,823.86 yuan.
After trial, the Ruian court held that the defendant Xu used his own or others' Meituan account to place a false large take-away order in his own or a friend's restaurant before the settlement date, and after receiving the settlement money from Meituan platform on the settlement date, he applied for a refund from Meituan platform on the grounds of "canceling the order" and defrauded others' property for the purpose of illegal possession, which constituted a crime of fraud. In accordance with the relevant provisions of the Criminal Law of People's Republic of China (PRC), the defendant Xu was sentenced to 7 years' imprisonment and fined 70,000 yuan.
The judge's statement
With the popularity of online ordering, new types of swipe fraud on take-away platforms emerge one after another. In this case, the defendant Xu, as a resident merchant of Meituan takeaway platform, used the platform's convenient service to customers as a means of malicious fraud by virtue of his own understanding of the platform's operating rules, and illegally gained more than 450,000 yuan in exchange for 7 years' imprisonment.
Purifying the online trading environment requires industry self-discipline, as well as the integrity of e-commerce operators and consumers. The judge reminded that there is no free lunch in the world, and the online platform is absolutely illegal. The court will severely punish crimes that seriously infringe upon the legitimate property rights and interests of others.