Michael (Zuowei) Liu, Dr. jur. (Münster), LL.M. (Münster), M.A. in English, Attorney-at-Law, Founding Partner of BRIGHT & RIGHT & Vice Director for German Law Institute of Harbin University of Technology  

I.                    Background Introduction

As legal professionals of BRIGHT & RIGHT, who have been practicing law in China for more than twenty (20) years, we have been serving a lot of international clients.  It is always a great professional joy when our cost-effective services have helped those international clients out, who are in need of our professional services.  However, it has not been the case that we can be of help to these international clients each and every time when they come to us for help, in particular when they come to us for urgent help as victims of Internet frauds.  In fact, more and more international victims of Internet frauds have come to us for possible legal assistance, and we feel pretty bad and uneasy each time when we find after respective careful analysis that we cannot help much.  It is like a good-conscience doctor wanting so much to help a patient reduce or eradicate the painfulness he is suffering, yet that doctor cannot simply do so, as the time for treatment is gone.  Those legal professionals with good conscience who care about the real interests of their clients will surely share our real feelings.  Having indirectly encountered so many similar occasions of Internet frauds, we cannot help preparing this short message, hoping to reduce the number of potential victims of Internet frauds in the future.

II.                  Some Practicable Tips for Protection Against Internet Frauds

Internet has smoothed our life of information, yet it has also made Internet frauds easier or popular.  And it is hard for normal Internet consumers to guard against Internet frauds, especially for those good-natured normal consumers like you and me, who tend to believe that all people are good-natured, and we are living in a wonderful world free of swindlers, not realizing that the Internet world is the same as the real world where there are many swindlers who have been heavily influenced by materialism and are so keen on getting rich overnight through cheating others by all means, giving up the value of “Integrity and honesty” at the very beginning of their entering into the business world, for which the world financial crisis has been one of best examples therefor.

As normal Internet consumer, I myself have also had the experience of being swindled on the Internet, as I believed that that “businessman” would not cheat only for the sake of a few hundred Yuan RMB or US dollars to destroy his name in the business world.  You and I as victims of Internet frauds were wrong, as these swindlers do not simply follow or share the same life values as you and I do, treasuring our name and integrity as dearly as our life! 

Not only that we were cheated because the swindlers do not share the same life values as we do.  But also that the modern technology has helped these swindlers to falsify each and every document needed for the business transaction, which is hard or almost impossible to for us, the normal consumers, to discern the real difference between the true and the false ones.  In one of the cases of Internet frauds we dealt with, the swindlers have presented their Chinese business license in color copy on their website.  At the first glance, even our legal professionals would believe it was authentic.  Only when we checked certain relevant information against our data system, and got the relevant confirmation from the relevant governmental institutions, as they also falsified the red stamp of the Customs, have we reached the conclusion that it has been an Internet fraud.  To make the situation worse, some swindlers have even tried to cheat people by pretending to be legal professionals like us, thus damaging the name of legal professionals in general in unjust way.  For example, our international cooperation partner from Madrid, Spain has asked us to help to validate one so-called legal professional in one law firm from Hong Kong, as his client has been damaged by the Internet fraud where the aforesaid “legal professional” has played a role therein.  With the due help from our cooperation partner in Hong Kong, we have found that that law firm and that legal professional do not officially exist at all in Hong Kong.

Well, the swindlers will do their best to make it by all means, and they are often “clever” at cheating, what can we do about it?  Yes, there is something that we can do by ourselves, that is, we follow this sentence to the letter “we can never be careful enough when we buy things through Internet”, particularly when we intend to buy items of small value from some small-scale vendors on the Internet.  Pretty often it has been the case that they give you wonderful replies with wonderful promises of assured quality features and the like, yet, once you effect the payment, you will receive either nothing or an item of poor quality, not something you desired at all.  Thereafter, they no long behave themselves the same as before, and they are gone forever, as they will not answer your e-mail inquiries or phone calls any more, they are simply dead on the other end!  Or they will answer your calls by rude ugly words!  And you cannot find them, as they are far away from you.  Then, you might want to report it to the police, first, you might not know exactly how to, and even if you know how to, then, many similar cases could have been reported to the police, and you can never tell when the police will recover the costs for you.  And you might want to hire a lawyer for such a case of small value, as you are very angry, that feeling we understood well, yet, economically speaking, it is not worth your while, and the lawyer’s either, to pursue such as a case.  Then, what should you do?

As legal professional having handled so many similar cases, we can only offer you some advice on your future behavior, to follow the saying that we have got to learn the lessons and be careful in the future, as prevention is always better treatment.  When you still plan to do shopping on the Internet in the future, you have got to be careful with your payment.  When you feel uncomfortable with the quality, vendor, pricing, etc., you had better locate a qualified local legal professional who is willing to help you, to accompany your Internet shopping, to check those critical items for you, to make sure of every aspect of the deal for you beforehand.  With some moderate legal fees plus some time and energy by the legal professional, your business transaction can be safely completed or another Internet fraud can be avoided as such.

One of our international clients who once experienced similar bad lucks on the Internet has followed our advice in letting us legal professionals of BRIGHT & RIGHT to act as his “business agent”, whereby we help him each time to check the reliability of the vendors and the products on the Internet as well as to control the actual payment process therefor.  Maybe something special therein is that he is from Germany, and he has the inborn great trust upon us, as we have had many years of solid legal education in Germany with honors, which can greatly prove that we are reliable and trustworthy, and we have met each other in person, thus his trust upon us is solid and deep.  And we feel honored to offer him the cost-effective services on the long-term basis, with which he has been doing international transactions through Internet without any such similar problems again.  You could follow suit in getting your own local legal professional whom you trust involved at the early stage of the business transactions on the Internet, whereby you could enjoy the same business freedom as our clients do for their business with China.