AI Customer Service Outsourcing Prepaid Scam: High-Fee Upfront Contracts Followed by Disappearance and Service Shutdown

Who Gets Targeted

The victims are primarily small and medium-sized e-commerce sellers, physical store owners, and startup local lifestyle merchants. These merchants generally face pain points such as high customer service labor costs and order losses due to unattended night shifts. Psychologically, they are eager to leverage new technologies to reduce costs and increase efficiency, yet they lack professional judgment regarding the actual implementation effects of AI technology. Consequently, they are easily lured by exaggerated claims such as replacing human staff, ultimately falling into the trap of prepaid scams.

骗局怎么运作

• Precision marketing promising labor replacement: Scammers obtain the contact information of e-commerce sellers or physical store owners via web scrapers. They proactively reach out through sales calls or social media advertisements, claiming that their AI customer service agency operations can provide 24/7 uninterrupted responses to visitors, even guaranteeing conversion rates and replacing most human staff, directly hitting the merchants' pain points of cost reduction and efficiency enhancement to hook them.
• High upfront service fee contracting: Once merchants express interest, sales representatives pitch annual proxy management or prepaid service fee schemes with steep discounts. They lure merchants into signing long-term agency contracts and paying over 10,000 yuan in service fees upfront, while embedding hidden, hard-to-achieve performance clauses in the contract to evade their own liability.
• Service quality plummets after simple deployment: At the beginning of payment collection, the scam company arranges basic automated response bots to handle daily routines, demonstrating so-called high-tech capabilities. However, a few days later, problems frequently appear such as bots giving irrelevant answers or failing to handle complex after-sales issues, causing the merchant's store experience score to plummet.
• Cutting contact and suspending service under the guise of system upgrades: When merchants find the results fall short of requirements and demand refunds and recourse, the agency operation contacts stall by citing reasons such as system upgrades or technical personnel adjustments, and then directly block the merchant's WeChat, while the backend system is completely shut down under the pretext of arrears or server maintenance.
• License and entity changes to evade refunds: When merchants visit in person to demand repayment, they find that the contracting company has long changed its legal representative or spun off its business into a shell company. They refuse refunds using harsh terms claiming services have already been provided or refund conditions have not been met, and ultimately the physical premises are completely emptied out, completing the scam run.

红旗信号（看到这些快跑）

• 🚩 Promising absolute results: Claiming the ability to 100% replace human customer service or guarantee an increase in store conversion rates by over 30%, as no artificial intelligence technology can currently make absolute guarantees and commitments regarding actual commercial conversion.
• 🚩 Mandatory long-term prepayment: Requiring a one-time lump-sum payment of high agency service fees for a year or even longer, while refusing to provide flexible payment models such as short-term free trials or monthly settlements.
• 🚩 Inconsistency between the contract entity and the actual promoter: The name of the contracting company does not match the company where the sales representatives work, or the contract is signed using a shell company that has frequently changed its legal representative recently, possesses extremely low registered capital, and has no paid-in capital.
• 🚩 Exaggerating official technological background: Falsely claiming to have achieved a deep strategic partnership with a certain internet giant or well-known large model enterprise, but unable to provide official authorization documents, verifiable case data, or relevant corporate certifications.
• 🚩 Hidden service definition clauses: The contract contains vague descriptions such as 'as long as the bot generates a response record, the current period's service is deemed completed,' laying the groundwork for subsequently refusing to refund prepaid fees.

真实案例

• A counterfeit online store agency operation fraud case tried by the Liandu District Court in Lishui City, Zhejiang Province showed that in February 2014, Li registered an internet company in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, claiming to be customer service for e-commerce websites like Taobao, JD.com, and Amazon. Under the guise of opening and managing online stores on behalf of others and promising management fees of only a few thousand yuan, the company hired over ten people to spread fraudulent advertisements. In August 2016, police from the Economic Development Zone Branch of the Lishui Municipal Public Security Bureau traveled to Hangzhou to arrest over ten suspects including Li, ultimately confirming 261 victims with a total involved amount exceeding 1.9 million yuan. Li and Xu were respectively sentenced to 13 years and 8 years in prison for the crime of fraud, with combined fines totaling 900,000 yuan. (Source: [https://www.jiemian.com/article/1037790.html](https://www.jiemian.com/article/1037790.html))
• In November 2025, according to Voc.com.cn reports, the Yuhua District People's Court in Changsha City publicized an internet fraud case carried out under the guise of e-commerce teacher sales courses and platform agency operations: two companies fabricated identities such as platform customer service and professional live-streaming anchors, making false promises of high-quality sources of goods and influencer-driven sales. Over the course of nearly a year, this caused 3,141 people to be swindled out of more than 4.4 million yuan. The eleven defendants, including Xia, all constituted the crime of fraud, with the principal culprit sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison. (Source: [https://hunan.voc.com.cn/news/202511/30993434.html](https://hunan.voc.com.cn/news/202511/30993434.html))
• In November 2025, according to Voc.com.cn reports, the agency operation fraud case publicized by the Yuhua District People's Court in Changsha City showed that fraudsters lured victims into purchasing small-store operation services ranging from 4,980 yuan to 15,880 yuan. After payment, the company neither operated the stores nor provided quality product sources or influencer sales. Customer service personnel made endless excuses when facing complaints, agreeing to refund a maximum of only 10%, until both companies were deregistered. Between August 2022 and June 2023, the two companies collected a total of over 1.4 million yuan in service fees from 3,141 victims, among whom 552 purchased small-store services, with both items involving a total defrauded fund of over 4.4 million yuan. (Source: [https://hunan.voc.com.cn/news/202511/30993434.html](https://hunan.voc.com.cn/news/202511/30993434.html))

Official Stance

• On August 6, 2026, People's Daily published an article reminding consumers and merchants to be alert to the phenomenon of unfulfilled AI customer service commitments, pointing out that some service providers exaggerate technical capabilities and fail to deliver on promises, and calling on merchants to prudently evaluate and retain communication evidence when introducing agency operation services.
• In April 2026, relevant departments in Beijing conducted investigations and issued notifications regarding chaos in AI-automated live-streaming training and related agency operations, explicitly pointing out the non-compliant behavior of certain merchants using the AI concept to make false promises and charge exorbitant fees, and demanding strengthened regulatory oversight of industry entry.
• On June 8, 2026, the Rule of Law Online column of CNR.cn disclosed that some fraud syndicates are wearing new disguises of digital transformation and AI agency operation services to commit fraud, reminding the vast number of small and medium-sized enterprises to be on guard against the risk of financial rupture and running away associated with prepaid models.

How to Protect Yourself

• ✅ Trial verification mechanism: Refuse to pay large long-term prepaid service fees all at once, and insist on conducting a one-to-two-week free or low-cost test first, personally testing the bot's response accuracy and scenario adaptability in the backend.
• ✅ Due diligence to verify qualifications: Before signing a contract, log into the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System to check the service provider's establishment date and capital status, verify its claimed official authorization cooperation documents through official channels, simultaneously pull up operational anomalies and administrative punishment records, and confirm that the contracting entity and the payment collection entity are the same.
• ✅ Step-by-step review of contract terms: Key terms such as service standards, refund mechanisms for failing to meet standards, and breach of liability must be written into the contract. Explicitly delete harsh terms such as 'responses count as completed service,' avoiding a passive position when seeking recourse later.
• ✅ Fund installment payment guarantee: Adopt methods similar to escrow transactions or pay service fees in quarterly installments, tying settlement of the final balance to the achievement of core operational indicators. Strictly avoid transferring large amounts of funds directly into private or unregulated accounts.