In today’s fast-paced era, the number of mobile apps is a dime a dozen, making it difficult for consumers to make a choice, and the leaderboard has become an extremely important way to debut in C. How to make your own App stand out is an important topic that merchants have been painstakingly studying.
Therefore, in order to improve the ranking of App in the application market rankings, the underground industrial chain of "brushing the list" has become a new way for many people to make money, and Jiang is one of them. In just a few years, by helping the App "brush the list", Jiang, who was originally poor, became a "successful person" who drove a luxury car to live in a villa, with an annual income of over 10 million, but he was still dissatisfied and took risks to become a behind-the-scenes accomplice of a group of illegal apps.
Recently, the Procuratorate of Ganyu District, Lianyungang City, Jiangsu Province has prosecuted 12 people including Jiang, Wang and Chen Mou.
Smelling business opportunities, game merchants transform their careers.
Jiang, who lives in Ganyu District, is a post-80s generation. After graduating from junior high school, he became interested in games. After a long time of contact, he found that he could also make money in games. So since 2009, Jiang has become a "game merchant" and started the business of reselling game coins and equipment. With the change of the game market environment, the game business is no longer as profitable as before, which makes Jiang, whose career has just improved, make it difficult. Just as he was worried about his livelihood, one day in 2013, a message from a friend aroused Jiang’s interest: you can easily make money by downloading the App with your mobile phone. Jiang smelled "business opportunities" from it. After in-depth understanding, he decided to do a big job in this new field.
The new field that Jiang wants to make a fortune is "brushing the list". App "brush list" is similar to Taobao’s "brush list", which is a competitive way for App developers to improve the ranking of a certain software in the mobile phone application market through the operation of the "brush list" company, so as to rapidly improve the ranking. In fact, "making money by downloading App on mobile phone" means that the mobile phone software R&D company puts the software on some software platforms called integrating wall in order to promote its software. The platform will issue task orders every day, and the task content is to help the promoted software complete the established download volume. After an individual or studio receives an order, every time it successfully downloads and tries it for a few minutes, even if a quantity is completed, every time it is completed, the behind-the-scenes company will give a certain reward to the integrating wall platform, and individuals or studios who take orders from the platform can share the profits from 1 yuan to 2 yuan.
These promoted apps continue to download and try out through the "Brush List" studio, and the download volume has surged in a short time, and the ranking in an official mall will increase rapidly. Some software may even jump from the previous hundreds to the top ten or even the top three. Popular software. The higher the ranking, the easier it is for the software to be searched by mobile phone users, and mobile phone users often give priority to downloading the top-ranked apps with many favorable comments among similar software according to the ranking of the application market. Mobile phone software R&D companies use the download habits and consumer psychology of mobile phone users to spend huge sums of money to promote their products, thus giving birth to an underground industrial chain for mobile phone software promotion.
At first, Jiang bought six mobile phones and downloaded the App with a friend to make money. After tasting the sweetness, Jiang successively purchased more than 100 mobile phones and hired 12 employees to expand the scale, and set up studios in two towns and villages in Ganyu District and Donghai County of Lianyungang City, specifically to "brush the list" for mobile apps. It is relying on this underground industrial chain that in just two years, Jiang made a profit of more than 1 million yuan.
Expand business and become a leader in the black industry chain.
With the gradual mastery of the business of "brushing the list" and knowing some industry insiders, Jiang began to have new small goals. He found that although doing manual hand brushing in the studio makes money, it costs a lot of manpower and time, and the income is still far from that of people who do tasks on the integrating wall software platform. "Instead of working for others, it is better to let others work for themselves." Jiang decided to be his own integral wall.
In the second half of 2015, Jiang began to implement his own plan to be a boss. He found an online company specializing in integrating wall software through his accumulated contacts, and promised to rent the integrating wall platform of this company, which he was responsible for maintaining and operating, and paid high rents on time. After completing the preparatory work, he took the initiative to contact some of his old customers, undertook the promotion task of App, released the download task on the platform according to the company’s needs, and others or other studios took orders to "brush the list" to earn the difference.
In order to further expand its business and make its industry on the road of "normalization", Jiang registered and established three network technology companies in 2016 and 2017, and began to discuss promotion business with mobile phone software R&D companies in the name of the company.
In the second half of 2016, Jiang changed the company’s profit model from simply earning the promotion price difference to earning the price difference and sharing the intermodal transportation, and from a middleman to a partner. The so-called intermodal sharing means that the mobile phone software research and development company will outsource the App promotion business to be promoted, and the company that receives the promotion task will be responsible for its own profits and losses, and bear the costs and risks of promotion. If the promotion is ineffective and loses money, you can only admit that you are unlucky; If the promotion is successful and profitable, after the profit, the mobile phone software research and development company will divide it with the company responsible for the promotion, and the company that promotes the software can get as much as 70% of the profit at the highest.
In the face of fierce competition in the "list-brushing" market, in order to seek more profit space, and because of the fear that the rented integrating wall platform will no longer be authorized for use at any time, the newly-started company may be in a dilemma. In March 2018, Jiang specially set up a network technology company in Shenzhen, recruiting computer software R&D personnel Zhang and Luo, who are also dreaming of making a fortune, to be responsible for independent research and development of integrating wall software.
After several months of research and development, Jiang finally completed his own integrating wall software platform, and no longer had to pay high fees for renting other people’s integrating wall software.
Because the review of mobile phone software in an application mall is very strict and complicated, in order to let the integrating wall software quickly log in to the application mall, Jiang spent money to buy a packaging software package, and in the name of environmental protection, deceived the review system and put it on the application mall. Later, it cost tens of thousands of yuan to promote the integration wall software. In order to attract more users to register, they specially rented a bus, pulled banners and distributed leaflets at the gates of many university campuses all over the country, wooed college students to register, and also started the slogan "It only takes a few minutes to make money easily with your fingers". As of the time of the incident, the registered users of the integrating wall software have reached more than 100,000.
In just a few years, Jiang gradually developed an underground studio into a large-scale company, and once entered the "top three" in the black industrial chain of "Brush List".
It is understood that Jiang’s company has a clear internal division of labor. Jiang himself is responsible for management and operation, his wife Liu is responsible for salary and account settlement, his brother Jiang Mochao is responsible for logistics, and his employees Chen Mou and Wang are responsible for managing the company’s business, Hu is responsible for driving, and Xu is responsible for customer service.
Take risks, package and promote illegal software.
With more and more promotion business undertaken, Jiang is getting deeper and deeper. At first, when undertaking the promotion task, he will download and try out these apps in person to understand some basic contents of these mobile phone software, but with the continuous deepening of business, more and more people are in contact. He found that behind the hot market of "brushing the list" is driven by huge interest groups.
At the beginning of 2019, a friend surnamed Su in the circle contacted Jiang: "I know a big customer named Tom in Cambodia. His company is responsible for making stock matching apps, and several financial softwares under it want to be promoted in China. I hope to find the most professional promotion company in the industry with high returns."
The three people who have their own plans hit it off. Tom is responsible for providing software materials overseas and putting forward specific promotion requirements. Su is responsible for intermediate contact and Jiang is responsible for publicity and promotion. To be on the safe side, they didn’t communicate through conventional communication means such as calling and sending WeChat, but used a foreign social software to communicate.
Because Tom’s software doesn’t have the qualification to be put on an application mall, Jiang repeated his old trick, disguised Tom’s software by purchasing the installation package of financial software through software vendor Peng, and then put it on an application mall. After a period of hard promotion by Jiang, the rankings of apps such as "so-and-so fund-raising" and "so-and-so master" have soared. Tom’s trust in Jiang is deepening, and he wants to continue to increase promotion efforts to attract more users to register and recharge their software.
After many discussions, the three people divided the profits into 30% for Jiang, 10% for Su and 60% for Tom. Because large sums of money are easy to attract attention and expose their targets in the bank, the three decided to trade in cash privately. Jiang sent his brother Jiang Mochao to Xiamen, Guangzhou and other places to withdraw money many times. In order to enhance the concealment, you need to give different signals every time you withdraw money. For example, if you take a 5 yuan RMB number as the joint signal, you can get a black sports bag full of cash by saying the correct number, ranging from one to two million to four or five million. It is by promoting and transporting these illegal software that Jiang made a profit of more than 30 million yuan in less than two years.
In addition, Jiang, Wang, Chen Mou and others took risks to sign promotion contracts with four companies with the titles of "financial services" and "information technology" without providing legal procedures, knowing that the company’s App might be suspected of illegal fund-raising and other financial crimes, and downloaded, promoted and drained the App products of the above companies, attracting a large number of users to register and recharge, providing help to four financial companies and making illegal profits of more than 16 million yuan. After investigation by the relevant departments, the above four companies and App were all filed for investigation by local public security organs on suspicion of illegally absorbing public deposits or fund-raising fraud, involving more than 2 billion yuan.
During the six years from 2013 to 2019, Jiang’s company used the means of "brushing the list", false praise, developing the integration wall for business subcontracting, and intermodal transportation with the mobile phone software research and development company to help the mobile phone App put on an application mall and improve its ranking. Knowing that the promoted App may involve illegal and criminal activities such as lottery, pornography, gambling, finance, etc., Jiang took risks for high profits, and did not hesitate to touch the legal red line, providing some software development companies with help such as packaging and advertising promotion, charging promotion fees or sharing profits, and making a total profit of more than 50 million yuan.
Digging deep and investigating carefully, prosecutors and police work together to verify new cybercrime.
With Jiang’s career in full swing, he began to squander the wealth accumulated by "brushing the list". He not only bought many single-family villas in Ganyu District, but also bought millions of luxury cars including Bentley, Porsche and Mercedes-Benz. He also rented luxury office buildings in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places for his enjoyment, and even gave a Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedan worth 1 million yuan to employees of the company as a year-end reward.
The French open is long, sparse and not leaking. At the beginning of March this year, the Public Security Bureau of Ganyu District of Lianyungang City received a report clue, through which it initially learned about the inside story of Jiang’s company and launched an investigation. The investigation found that the people involved in this big case of "brushing the list" were not only spread all over Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Fujian and other provinces and cities, but even overseas people participated, involving a total amount of 200 million yuan, involving a wide range of people, a huge amount of money involved, and the complexity of the electronic evidence involved. In addition, before the incident, Jiang had cancelled his company and was preparing to enter the live broadcast industry, which brought great difficulties to the investigation and evidence collection.
In order to successfully get rid of this "hard bone", on April 16, the Ganyu District Procuratorate specially appointed two experienced post prosecutors and three assistant prosecutors to form a task force to handle the case. The task force intervened in the investigation in advance for the first time, guided the public security organs to investigate and collect evidence, focused on fixing the operation mode of the integrating wall software, and timely restored the deleted electronic data such as background transaction details, fund account books and intermodal list in the computer involved in Jiang’s company. At the same time, it is suggested that the public security organs clarify the asset distribution of the persons involved, promptly notify the relevant financial institutions to stop payment and freeze accounts urgently. Finally, with the concerted efforts of the procuratorial organs and the public security organs, Jiang’s illegal income of more than 50 million yuan was successfully frozen, and the real estate and vehicles involved in his name were seized and detained.
As a new type of cyber crime emerging in recent years, the case of "brushing the list" needs to be extra cautious in the qualitative and quantitative process of the case. To this end, the Ganyu District Procuratorate held several judgment and analysis meetings, and conducted in-depth research and discussion on the evidence standard of whether the case constitutes the crime of illegal business operation, the status and role of criminal suspects, the jurisdiction of upstream crimes, illegal income and the disposal and management of the property involved. The task force, together with the public security personnel, integrated, classified and summarized the written evidence and electronic data collected in the case, forming a complete evidence closed loop.
On May 9th, Ganyu District Procuratorate decided to approve the arrest of three main suspects in this case, namely Jiang, Wang and Chen Mou.
In the process of examination and prosecution, after the procuratorial organ informed the defendants of their litigation rights and explained the relevant provisions of the lenient system of pleading guilty and admitting punishment, 18 defendants in this case voluntarily pleaded guilty and admitted punishment, and signed a confession statement under the witness of lawyers. In addition, the Ganyu District Procuratorate, from the point of view of adapting the crime and punishment, made sentencing suggestions for six ordinary employees and two programmers in accordance with the law.
At present, the case is under further investigation.
(Title design: Wu Meizhen)
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