East China’s Jiangsu Province will launch the 2018 Internet Net Thunder law enforcement campaign from August to October this year in order to deepen the purification of the network market environment and promote high-quality development of the Internet-related industries, the Provincial Industry and Commerce Bureau said on Tuesday.
The law enforcement campaign will focus on cracking down on online pyramid schemes, unfair competition on the Internet and infringement and counterfeiting in the Internet sector.
In recent years, pyramid selling has taken on new formations with new variants emerged from offline to online, from physical to non-physical.
Some pyramid selling dealers carry out fraudulent activities under the pretence of capital operation, WeChat business marketing and charity events and use high returns as a bait to deceive victims to carry out online pyramid sales, which is more concealed and deceptive.
Pyramid schemes have a long history in China. From 2005 to 2015, 21,904 pyramid schemes were investigated and 990 million yuan confiscated.
Currently these schemes are expanding through the Internet, especially social networks, including domestic chat apps, the MPS said. They spread more widely and faster, involving greater amounts of money and more victims.
A pyramid scheme, illegal in most countries, is a business model based on enrolling increasing numbers of participants instead of real sales or investment. In such schemes, an organization promises new members a share of the money taken from the people they recruit.
（source:ourjiang.com）
