One of the world’s “biggest online scams” has affected consumers in Europe and the US. How the victims were tricked

The Guardian, Die Zeit and Le Monde investigated the international scam and discovered that the network behind it originated in China.

Over 76,000 fake websites have been created for this scam.

One of the world’s “biggest online scams” has affected consumers in Europe and the US

Several reporters and IT experts participated in the investigation. According to the results, the operation is highly organized and is based on complex technological techniques. Moreover, the network is still working.

More than 800,000 people have been duped by one of the world’s “biggest online scams,” as the dangerous strategy has been called. The network has created tens of thousands of websites. On these they claimed to offer products from Dior, Nike, Lacoste, Hugo Boss, Versace and Prada, among others, at discounted prices.

The sites were published in many languages, such as English, German, French, Spanish, Swedish and Italian. They were created to lure consumers in order to steal their money and financial data.

These sites are not affiliated with the luxury companies whose products they claim to sell. In most cases, consumers did not receive any product after ordering.

The fake store chain appears to have been created in 2015. Over 1 million orders have been processed in the past 3 years alone. Not all payments were processed successfully. But analysts say one of the “biggest online scams” has resulted in losses of more than €50 million. Many of the shops have been abandoned. But about 22,500 of them still work.

The fake sites stole buyers’ personal data

More than 800,000 people in Europe and the US have disclosed their email addresses on the site. 476,000 of them also entered their financial data on the dangerous sites. Including the details on the cards. They all also recorded their names, phone numbers and physical addresses.

“Often these people are part of criminal groups to collect data that can be used against people later,” said Katherine Hart, director of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute. “Consumers are at risk of falling victim to phishing attempts.”

“Data is the new currency,” said Jake Moore, who spoke of one of the world’s “biggest online scams”. What’s more, Moore is worried about more than just hackers. “The big picture we have to assume is that the Chinese government could also have access to this data.”

The existence of the network was discovered by Security Research Labs (SR Labs), a cyber security firm in Germany. The company’s experts obtained several GB of data, which they sent to the publication Die Zeit.

The web developers also seem to have made a system that semi-automatically creates and generates these sites. It appears that the main criminal group allowed other hackers to use the same system. According to the data, at least 210 entities accessed the system from 2015 until now.