MORE than 10 people in Shenzhen, and over 100 across China, have fallen victim to scams after shopping on JD.com, a large e-commerce platform in China, according to Thursday’s Southern Metropolis Daily.

    A man in Longgang District, surnamed Yu, spent several hundred yuan buying a mountaineering jacket in a shop on JD.com on March 18.

    The day after he paid for the jacket online, Yu received a telephone call from someone claiming to work for the customer service of JD.com. The person on the phone said Yu’s money was not transferred into the shop’s account because of a system upgrade.

    The caller knew Yu’s personal information, including full name, family address, telephone number, ID card number as well as the product he bought and the time he bought it.

    Yu was asked to go through a refund process and place a new order. He followed the instructions.

    However, he found 40,000 yuan (US$6,400) had been transferred out of his bank account minutes after he input his bank account number and password into a webpage that had been sent to his mobile phone.

    Yu realized the scam after calling JD.com’s customer service hotline.

    Several other people have also fallen victim to this type of scam, the paper said.

    “There might be something wrong with JD.com. Our order information was leaked less than half a day after we placed orders,” said another victim, surnamed Wang.

    The Southern Metropolis Daily found more than 100 people who shopped on JD.com across the country who lost more than 2 million yuan to similar scams in the past six months.

    A victim in Beijing, identified as Han, opened a QQ account in January to organize victims to seek compensation from the e-commerce platform operator.

    Zhang Xinnian, a lawyer in Beijing who represents the group, said JD.com should assume civil responsibility, because its e-commerce platform has obvious security holes. The operator failed to deal with the issues in a timely manner, the paper said.

    Han said the operator’s customer service department called him in January, offering to compensate victims’ losses.

    “However, they said on phone it’s not the company’s problem. It was just an advance payment for the victims,” said Han.

    Some victims accused the company of being unfair because not all victims received the money. (Martin Li)