MONTEBELLUNA – Eight hundred thousand victims worldwide, 14,000 in Italy and just under a thousand in Veneto. Among these, 150 in the Marche and 160 in Venice. These are the numbers of a colossal digital scam, orchestrated by China, at the center of an investigation conducted by Treviso postal policecoordinated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Venice, with an illicit turnover of 125 million euros.
The scam is based on thousands of websites that advertise and sell products from famous Italian and international fashion brandsincluding the well-known Diadora, Geox and Benetton, all originating from the province of Treviso.
Victims, attracted by discounted prices on luxury products, end up giving in to temptation, providing scammers not only with money, but also personal data and credit card information, as well as email addresses and other sensitive data. In the end, buyers receive nothing of what they ordered, or they receive goods that are substandard or different from what was advertised.
The investigation was started thanks to the report of a Montebelluna company specialized in IT security, which in 2016 stipulated an agreement with the police headquarters to prevent and combat computer crimes. After identifying around 13,000 websites used to sell luxury products at negligible prices, it was discovered that all these domains were registered with foreign webhosting companies, mainly in Fujian province, in southeast China.
The Treviso postal police, in collaboration with the Venice department, has traced the number of citizens defrauded in the Veneto provinces through transactions carried out on fraudulent sites. In the “fake shops” discovered by Yarix and then investigated by the postal police, products from 49 fashion and luxury brands were advertised, including Benetton, Diadora, Geox, Luisa Spagnoli and Nordica. The sites were well done, with product photos taken from the companies’ official websites, artfully edited and advertised at irresistible prices.
Many of the victims were deceived starting from search engines: by searching for the name of a designer product, they were directed to fraudulent sites indexed in the search results, giving the impression of being reliable. The episode is reported today from Tribuna and Gazzettino. OT
