"Buy a piece of clothing for children in the mountainous areas" "Can you place an order for small animals..." It seems that you are doing charity, but in fact you are using the false charity routine of "buying instead of donating" to make profits.
Recently, with the cooperation of Douyin e-commerce, the police successfully cracked a false public welfare fraud case and arrested the suspect Yu. At present, Yu has been criminally detained by the police on suspicion of fraud in accordance with the law.
In early May 2025, the Douyin E-commerce Quality Protection Center discovered that a store released materials and claimed to offer love to children in mountainous or poor areas through the form of "buying instead of donation", and guided users to place orders and purchases. However, the store’s relevant product pages did not mark the platform’s public welfare donation love good products, which could not confirm the authenticity and performance of its donation commitments. The relevant materials were suspected of being edited and collageed through the online public material, and the merchant was suspected of having false public welfare profits.
In order to maintain the normal operation order of the platform and protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, the Douyin E-commerce Quality Protection Center immediately called the police.
After the investigation and confirmation that the merchant had committed fraud, on May 21, 2025, the police arrested Yu, the actual controller of the merchant, and confessed to the facts of fraud. The police found out that Yu controlled multiple store accounts and attracted users by posting video materials for poor children and pets selling miserable products in mountainous areas. The copywriting marked "Buy a piece of clothing for children" and "place an order for small animals" and other words to induce consumers to place an order. The relevant videos were edited and pieced together from the Internet. In fact, Yu did not ship loving clothes to children in the mountainous areas, nor did he send gifts back to consumers. After verification, Yu made an illegal profit of more than 690,000 yuan through the false public welfare "buying instead of donating" model.
The relevant person in charge of the Douyin E-commerce Quality Protection Center said that in order to maintain the ecological health of the platform and protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, Douyin E-commerce has zero tolerance for the behavior of using public welfare false publicity to make profits. In response to the chaos of false charity, such as deliberately creating false "charity" character design, marketing sales and marketing in the name of "helping the elderly", "helping the disabled", and "helping the poor", etc., the above-mentioned relevant person in charge said that the relevant accounts and content will be dealt with strictly based on the severity of the violation.
Text/Beijing Youth Daily Reporter Wen Jing
Editor/Beijing Youth Daily Reporter Song Xia Intern Sui Xin
