Over 1200 restaurants reported for "photographing cucumber dishes"! Is "professional fake-busting" consumer protection or profit-seeking?

In the consumer market, especially in the field of food safety, a group of special “professional fake fighters” are active. They originally used legal channels to defend rights, promote rectification of unscrupulous merchants, and recover losses for consumers—“market woodpeckers.” However, driven by profit, “fighting fake” has gradually evolved into “fake fighting,” with some professional fake fighters acting for personal gain under the guise of consumer rights protection.

Nowadays, courses to train professional fake fighters in bulk have even appeared on the market. For a few thousand yuan, you can learn the entire process from product selection, evidence collection, to complaint and compensation, with claims that legal risks can be avoided. When fake fighting becomes a quick, replicable “business,” are these mass-produced fake fighters truly defending rights, or are they profiting under the guise of rights protection?

Pay a few thousand yuan to “learn fake fighting”

Professional fake fighting has degenerated from rights protection to business

Mr. Zhang runs an online cosmetics store in Tangshan, Hebei. Recently, his shop was targeted by a professional fake fighter. This fake fighter cast a wide net, repeatedly using false advertising and lack of business qualifications as reasons to demand only refunds for several hundred yuan worth of cosmetics purchased from the store. When refused, they filed complaints with the platform.

In fact, Mr. Zhang’s shop is fully qualified and can provide proof that the products were not falsely advertised. After verification, the platform found no violations in both cases and lifted restrictions on the store.

Investigations revealed that, in some people’s eyes, fake fighting has been distorted into a quick, repeatable, and scalable business. On short video platforms, many influencers offer “professional fake fighting courses,” claiming to teach “how to make money by fake fighting.” These courses cover the entire process: “product selection, evidence collection, complaints, and claims,” even listing high-success-rate fake fighting tracks to guide learners to target specific areas.

Fake fighting training influencers: How to make money from fake fighting? There are four steps: find products, gather evidence, negotiate, and follow procedures. Which track is more efficient for making money? The first involves low prices and high volume—if it’s food, the law stipulates compensation of 1,000 yuan per case. Completing 10 or 20 cases can be quite profitable. The second involves fewer cases but larger amounts.

A reporter contacted a professional fake fighter who offers courses. He said that anyone can become a so-called “expert” in fake fighting as long as they thoroughly understand relevant laws, regulations, and practical points from the courses. The training course costs 3,000 yuan, and he claims to provide one-on-one guidance, teaching how to pressure merchants with persuasive language and how to use complaint and reporting procedures of regulatory agencies to achieve compensation.

Reviewing the course materials, the entire process is packaged as “compliant fake fighting,” but it is full of borderline tactics, teaching how to evade legal recognition of profit-driven fake fighting, focusing entirely on “how to quickly claim and profit.”

Experts: Some “professional fake fighters” are already crossing legal boundaries

Tang Jiansheng, Deputy Secretary-General of the Shanghai Consumer Rights Protection Committee, said that professional claimants often use minimal costs to deliberately find superficial compliance flaws in merchants, especially small and micro businesses, to demand compensation. This is far from the original intent of rights protection.

Tang said, “There is a professional fake fighter in Shanghai who reported over 1,200 restaurants for issues with their cucumber dishes in a year. Their compliance requirement is that cold dishes need a dedicated area, but that doesn’t mean the restaurant’s cucumbers are necessarily unsafe. These fake fighters often exaggerate compliance flaws as food safety issues to threaten merchants: ‘Just pay me some money, and I’ll let you go.’”

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In Tang Jiansheng’s view, the current emergence of mass training has turned professional fake fighting from individual acts into organized, large-scale collective fake fighting, even employing “wolf pack tactics.” “A group of people raided small convenience stores from top to bottom, and if they find a product past its expiration date, they file a claim. Some even plant expired items in the store. For small and medium-sized merchants, it’s impossible to prove that the product isn’t from their store.”

Legal regulations and judicial practices in China have long defined professional fake fighting. The Supreme People’s Court issued relevant judicial interpretations clearly stating—

For those who knowingly buy and sell fake products, within reasonable scope of daily consumption, their punitive damages claims are supported by law;

For repeated purchases, repeated claims, and malicious high compensation claims, support will not be granted;

The “Measures for Handling Complaints and Reports of Market Supervision and Administration” effective from April 15, 2026, further regulate malicious claims and improve the jurisdiction of platform operators’ complaints.

Lu Yun, Director of the Consumer Rights and Product Quality Safety Legal Committee of the Beijing Bar Association, said that unlike normal rights protection and popular science guidance, this kind of training essentially teaches people how to profit through improper means, already crossing legal boundaries. If it becomes a group or organized activity used for coercion or extortion, it may violate criminal law and bear criminal responsibility.

(Central Radio and Television General Station China Voice)

【Source: Peninsula Metropolitan Daily】