Claiming compensation for snacks forty times, "small gains adding up" becomes extortion

Compiled from: Red Star News, The Paper, Hangzhou Daily
 
Over two years, a snack company received continuous complaints and claims: various insects and foreign objects appeared in products, some insects even unheard of. Police traced clues and found these claims pointed to the same college student.

 
 

Yuan (20 years old, enrolled at a school in Shandong) purchased snack products online, then placed insects and hair purchased online into the snacks and subsequently demanded compensation from the merchants. Using this method, Yuan made 43 compensation claims and profited over 7,000 yuan. Yuan has now been criminally detained.
 
Case review
Xiao Zi (a pseudonym) was a customer service representative at an enterprise in Hubei. One day in October 2021, while she was handling customer inquiries as usual, she received a complaint message that read: “I bought your snacks, and there was a bug in it, with wings.” Although the product had already been opened, adhering to the principle of trusting the customer, Xiao Zi reported it through the normal procedure, and the after-sales department quickly processed a free order for the customer. “I’ve already eaten it, I’m not feeling well, and you need to compensate me 200 yuan.” Even though the matter had not yet been investigated, in order to accommodate the customer’s shopping experience, Xiao Zi still processed an advance compensation for this customer.
 
To ensure a positive customer experience, businesses typically provide customers with a certain amount of compensation first before conducting an internal investigation. After receiving the compensation, Yuan seemed to get a taste for easy money and saw it as a way to profit. He then repeatedly and intentionally added foreign objects to food he had purchased in order to extort compensation from the businesses. According to investigating officer Xia Qianqiao, statistics show that over more than two years, Yuan reported 43 "problematic" products to this snack company but only agreed to send back 3 for the company to verify. Upon inspection, these so-called foreign objects all showed obvious signs of deliberate placement.
 
"I used a needle to make a slit in the food packaging and then put the bugs inside, and I received more than 7,800 yuan in compensation in total." Under the meticulous investigation of case-handling police officer Xia Qianqiao, Yuan confessed. The police gradually gathered evidence of Yuan's crimes and arrested him on the afternoon of May 17. During interrogation, Yuan pleaded guilty to the facts of his crime of extortion.

 
 

 
"Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China"
Article 274 Extortion
Whoever extorts public or private property, if the amount is relatively large or if extortion is committed multiple times, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years, criminal detention, or public surveillance, and shall also, or shall only, be fined; if the amount is huge or if there are other serious circumstances, the sentence shall be fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than ten years, and a fine shall also be imposed; if the amount is especially huge or if there are other especially serious circumstances, the sentence shall be fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years, and a fine shall also be imposed.
 
 
[1] The author's perspective
From a legal perspective, extortion refers to the act of forcibly demanding a relatively large amount of public or private property from a victim by means of threat or coercion, with the intent of illegal possession. The threshold for “relatively large amount” starts at 3,000 yuan. Later, an amendment to the Criminal Law added “repeated extortion” as a constitutive element, meaning that even if the amount of property extorted does not reach the relatively large threshold, committing the act three or more times is also suspected of the crime of extortion.
 
[2] From an economic perspective, food enterprises should resolutely protect consumers' legitimate rights and interests, improve mechanisms for resolving consumer disputes, and continuously deliver better products and service experiences to consumers. At the same time, they must firmly resist malicious profit-driven complaints that exploit the guise of rights protection to commit extortion, and prevent false reports and malicious claims through various illegal means, jointly fostering a consumption environment based on honesty and trustworthiness.