Professional Claimants: Fake Consumer Rights Protection and Real Extortion via Batch-Fabricated Product Flaws

Who Gets Targeted

Primarily targeting small and medium-sized catering stores, e-commerce food sellers, health supplement merchants, and fresh produce vendors. Affected store owners generally lack legal and human resources; fearing negative store ratings, delisting, or negative public sentiment, they tend to yield rather than fight back psychologically. Professional exploiters leverage this 'desire for a quiet life' mentality to repeatedly extort hundreds to thousands of yuan, accumulating into a large-scale grey industry income. Some elderly store owners and newly established micro-merchants are even repeatedly targeted by the same gangs, falling into a long-term passive compensation cycle.

骗局怎么运作

• Step 1: Batch Target Selection - Gangs use keywords on e-commerce and food delivery platforms to screen minor flaws in food, health supplements, and bulk goods such as labels, ingredient lists, net weight, and advertising slogans. Alternatively, they visit offline catering stores and specifically order high-sensitivity dishes like medium-rare grilled meat or sashimi to create entry points for claiming 'food safety' violations.
• Step 2: Evidence Fabrication - They place batch orders online, retaining screenshots and unboxing videos to establish 'knowing buy-to-sue' evidence chains before filing lawsuits or complaints. At offline stores, they use AI to generate fake diagnosis certificates, outpatient medical records, or test reports, and sometimes even bring their own problematic ingredients to photograph on-site, creating superficially convincing 'injuries' or 'foreign objects'.
• Step 3: Complaint Pressure - They simultaneously file complaints with 12315, 12345, market regulation authorities, and platform customer service, threatening to expose the business to the media or initiate 'lawsuits for every single order,' causing merchants to suffer platform demotion or regulatory interviews. Some gangs also register corporate legal or financial email addresses to repeatedly push 'settlement offers', creating dual administrative and reputational pressure.
• Step 4: Private Settlement Extortion - Before regulatory case registration or litigation, gangs use 'withdrawing lawsuits', 'withdrawing complaints', and 'no further reporting' as leverage, demanding hundreds to thousands of yuan in 'compensation', 'nutrition fees', or 'emotional distress fees' verbally or via WeChat. They emphasize that failure to pay will escalate the issue across the entire internet, forcing business owners to pay to make trouble go away and sign 'settlement agreements'.
• Step 5: Streamlined Replication - Once successful, they add the merchant's information to a 'target database', rotate personnel to make repeated return visits or recommend accomplices to claim against the same or similar categories. They package these tactics into training courses and spread 'scripts + templates + AI evidence collection tools' in chat groups, achieving sustainable grey industry replication across cities and categories.

红旗信号（看到这些快跑）

• 🚩 Abnormally high purchase quantities by the complainant, or deliberately picking on non-safety flaws such as labels and net weight, followed by filing complaints and proactively proposing 'private settlement' shortly before or after ordering.
• 🚩 Compensation demands far exceeding statutory tenfold/threefold compensation amounts, refusal of platform after-sales service or consumer association mediation, and acceptance of private bank transfers only.
• 🚩 Provided 'diagnosis certificates' and 'test reports' lacking hospital stamps or testing institution qualifications, some being AI-generated texts where dates and medical visit records do not match.
• 🚩 The same phone number, delivery address, or complainant repeatedly complaining against multiple similar merchants within a short period, showing obvious batch operation characteristics.
• 🚩 Threatening language using standardized templates with repeated pressure keywords such as 'public opinion spread', 'media exposure', 'lawsuit for every single order', and 'regulatory interviews'.
• 🚩 Refusing merchant offers for returns, exchanges, refunds, or official administrative review channels, and accepting only cash payments such as 'settlement fees', 'nutrition fees', and 'emotional distress fees'.

真实案例

• According to Guangming Daily on April 13, 2026, a 3-person professional claiming gang targeted 6 restaurants within 5 days for 'scamming' under pretexts such as undercooked food and foreign objects, and were later apprehended by police and handled in accordance with the law (Guangming Daily: 3-person professional claiming gang 'scams' 6 restaurants in 5 days).
• According to Shanghai media reports in June 2026, a man in Shanghai consumed medium-rare grilled meat at a barbecue restaurant and then used AI to forge outpatient medical records and diagnosis certificates to demand high compensation from the restaurant; the court ruled his behavior constituted the crime of extortion and sentenced him accordingly (NetEase News / Tencent News: A man in Shanghai eats medium-rare grilled meat and turns around to extort the restaurant using AI-forged medical records). (Source: [https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20260611A09CYQ00](https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20260611A09CYQ00))
• According to Beijing Daily on July 23, 2026, Beijing legally sentenced a 'professional claiming' extortion case, where a relevant gang extorted compensation from merchants through batch complaints and threats of exposure, which was recognized by the court as extortion resulting in criminal sentences (Beijing Daily: Beijing sentences a 'professional claiming' extortion case).
• In August 2026, according to NetEase News reports, Shanghai police successfully cracked an illegal financial agency rights-protection extortion case: 21 suspects instigated clients to extort securities investment consulting institutions via 'reporting' methods and took commissions proportionally. Since May 2026, over a thousand people frequently dialed the enterprise's '400 hotline' demanding full refunds of membership service fees on the grounds of false advertising, causing economic losses up to over 20 million yuan. The 21 suspects have been legally subjected to criminal compulsory measures. (Source: [https://www.163.com/dy/article/L3OBMT7P05503FCU.html](https://www.163.com/dy/article/L3OBMT7P05503FCU.html))
• According to Red Commercial Network on April 19, 2026, Shengzhou police in Zhejiang 'struck with lightning speed' to cut off the dark hands extorting food enterprises, as a related gang repeatedly pressured and extorted food enterprises under the guise of food safety issues, prompting a centralized police roundup (Red Commercial Network: 'Tip of the Tongue Safety' brooks no scams; Shengzhou police in Zhejiang strike with lightning speed to cut off the dark hands extorting food enterprises).

Official Stance

• In 2026, public security organs in multiple regions successively issued notices clarifying that profit-driven professional claims and professional reporting are suspected of illegal crimes, with two 'professional claimants' receiving first-instance prison sentences, marking a major shift in law enforcement approaches (NetEase News: The death knell for professional claims has sounded! Public security organs across regions issue consecutive notices! Two 'professional claimants' sentenced in first instance).
• In 2026, Shanghai procuratorial organs centrally prosecuted a batch of profit-driven professional claim and professional reporting cases, emphasizing the punishment according to law of gang-like and industrialized behaviors operating under the guise of 'rights protection' (The Paper: Rule of law escorts the business environment! Shanghai procuratorial organs centrally prosecute a batch of profit-driven professional claim and professional reporting cases).
• In July 2026, Beijing legally sentenced a 'professional claiming' extortion case, carrying out criminal crackdowns against the industrialization of professional complaints and the demand for private settlement compensation (Beijing Daily: Beijing sentences a 'professional claiming' extortion case).
• In July 2026, a special report published by Guangming Daily pointed out that online shopping and food delivery have become high-incidence fields for profit-driven claims, warning that such behaviors have shifted from civil disputes to criminal extortion risks (Guangming Daily: Fake rights protection, real moneymaking! Online shopping and food delivery become high-incidence fields for profit-driven claims).

How to Protect Yourself

• ✅ Establish a compliance self-inspection checklist: Check food labels, advertising slogans, net weights, ingredient lists, promotional materials, etc., one by one against national standards and platform rules to minimize source flaws and leave professional claimants with no loopholes to exploit.
• ✅ Establish a complaint response SOP: Upon receiving a complaint, retain communication records, physical goods, and shipping information immediately. Do not rush to private settlements; instead, pursue official mediation and administrative review through compliant platform channels, consumer associations, or market regulation departments.
• ✅ Secure evidence and call the police immediately upon threats: For individuals demanding personal transfers under the name of 'exposure', 'lawsuit', or 'regulatory interview', take screenshots and screen recordings and report to the local public security bureau, and claim criminal liability for extortion based on centralized prosecution notices from procuratorial organs.
• ✅ Strengthen store and customer service identification: Train front-desk and online customer service staff to recognize abnormal orders and script templates. For suspicious batch orders, orders of medium-rare dishes with self-brought testing/medical records, retain additional on-site surveillance and store purchase-sales records, guiding third-party testing when necessary.
• ✅ Connect with industry associations and legal advisors: Join local chambers of commerce or brand alliances to obtain shared 'professional claimant blacklist' databases and standardized response templates, and commission lawyers to review settlement agreements to avoid being repeatedly extorted long-term for the sake of a quick fix.