OVER 1,000 people were allegedly scammed out of over 1 million yuan (US$152,000) by two official WeChat accounts that promised to return certain amounts of money to customers after they bought products from the accounts, the Shenzhen Evening News reported.

    Dozens of people gathered at Tencent’s headquarters Sunday after their money was allegedly taken by the official WeChat accounts. A resident, surnamed Wei, bought tea for over 700 yuan from an official WeChat account May 29, but did not get back 110 yuan promised by the account.

    A college student, surnamed Song, who also showed up at Tencent’s headquarters, took a train to Shenzhen from Shandong on Saturday. He noticed the advertisement of an official WeChat account named “佛缘金鼎” May 13, which promised that customers would get 70 yuan for buying 20 yuan of farm products from the account. Song checked the account and found it was run by an agricultural production company with a registered capital of 4.56 million yuan. He contacted Tencent’s customer service center and was told that the account’s operating body had passed WeChat’s real-name verification. He spent 4,120 yuan buying eggs from the account from May 16 to 22 as he wanted to earn extra money, but he never got his money back.

    Song said the account’s customer service officer told him if a customer introduced by him bought products from the account, he could get 15 percent of the payment in return. Later he was invited to a WeChat chat group with the company’s staff and customers. A staffer kept persuading customers to introduce new customers, but they never mentioned anything about the payback and one day the chat group suddenly closed, and the company’s WeChat account was shut down on May 26. The next day he called the company’s legal representative, who said he knew nothing about the issue and that the account was operated by his nephew.

    Most victims had called the local police, but the police didn’t file a case because the involved amount of money for each victim was not high enough. Song said his greed got him into this trouble, but the poor supervision on these official WeChat accounts was also disappointing.

    According to people who rallied at Tencent’s headquarters, nearly 650,000 yuan was swindled out of around 1,000 customers by the account, and the sales amount of the account reached 4.8 million yuan.

    Another official WeChat account named “云上山河” also promised to return money to customers if they introduced new customers to buy products from the account. An estimated 470 people were defrauded 490,000 yuan.

    A Tencent’s spokesperson said the company only verifies official account operators’ information registered with the industrial and commercial authority, but it won’t restrict marketing methods or business operation of these accounts. Tencent will help customers recover their money and require involved companies to refund customers’ money. Tencent had shut down over 100,000 WeChat accounts involved in scams since Dec. 13 last year to Saturday.

    Zhen Wei, a Shenzhen-based lawyer, said merchants involved in defrauding customers should give each customer compensation three times what the person originally paid. If customers have disputes with online merchants, the online service provider should provide involved merchants’ information to customers if required. Zhen said regulations should be step up to manage WeChat shopping before a relevant law is put into place. (Zhang Yang)