A teen from Shanghai has been sentenced to six years in prison after exploiting a refund loophole on a cosmetics shopping site, making over $570K in fraudulent profits.
What one teen thought was an easy way to make a quick buck has turned into a hefty prison sentence after his scheme was uncovered by police.
17-year-old ‘Lu’ was browsing an unnamed cosmetics shopping platform when he discovered a curious flaw in its return system. On the site, customers must input a tracking number for the package they are sending back to the company in order to receive a refund from their return.
However, the site itself didn’t verify whether or not those tracking numbers were legit, meaning that anyone could hypothetically get their money back without actually returning any items. Lu took advantage of this loophole for a total of 11,900 orders, getting products worth 4.76 million yuan ($680,000 USD).
What did he do with all these cosmetics? Lu, seeing an opportunity to make money, resold these ‘returned’ products on second-hand websites, making an eye-popping profit of 4.01 million yuan ($574,000 USD).
Shanghai teenager makes big bucks from site’s faulty return policy
Lu went on a shopping spree with his newfound riches, buying designer clothing, the latest phones, and even gifting some cash to his buddies… but his wealth wouldn’t last for long.
Eventually, the website noticed something was amiss with returns on their platform and reported the fraud to police. Lu was arrested in March 2024 after investigators tied the fraudulent ‘refunds’ back to him.
In July 2025, Lu was sentenced to six years in prison, a modified sentence due to his age. As reported by VICE, these cases usually carry a sentence of ten years, but since Lu was a minor at the time of the crime, he was given a more lenient punishment.
Pexels.com: Leeloo The First17-year-old Lu went on a shopping spree with his criminally-earned cash.
The news has just now surfaced in Chinese mainstream media, with a Shanghai court confirming the July 2025 sentencing.
Chinese social media is alight with comments about the viral crime, with some users decrying the teen for his crime, while others blame the website.
“He used his cleverness doing the wrong deed,” one said, as per the South China Morning Post.
“The platform also has problems, not detecting the loophole until it has lost such a great amount of money,” another argued.
This is the latest viral crime story to come out of China after Chinese crime rings reportedly made over $1 billion from spamming American phones with text scams in 2025.
