A Chinese teenager has been sentenced to six years in prison after he exploited a loophole in an online shopping platform’s refund policy to make thousands of fraudulent claims.

The 17-year-old made 11,900 bogus refund applications without returning the goods and made four million yuan (US$570,000) from doing so.

It was recently reported that a court in Shanghai issued a verdict in his case in July 2025.

In March 2024, a cosmetics shopping platform reported to the police that it had become a victim of fraudulent returns.

Officers arrested the suspect, a 17-year-old surnamed Lu.

Lu allegedly noticed a loophole on an online shopping platform which allowed him to fill in fake courier numbers in his return request and get a refund without the seller receiving the returned goods.

Lu opened multiple accounts to buy products from the platform, before exploiting a loophole to keep both the goods and the refunds.