Gang of book pirates busted after selling thousands of poorly made fakes on Taobao
Three suspects have been detained for allegedly pirating and selling books online for nearly two years, Shanghai police said today.
In a recent raid of the gang's base in Suqian city of neighboring Jiangsu Province, police discovered over 100,000 copies of printed books worth over 2 million yuan (US$300,000), and are yet to determine the total amount of profit made through the illegal business.
Investigation started earlier this year after a man surnamed Liang, who works for a bookstore in Hongkou District, Shanghai, reported to police that over 10,000 copies of children’s books he purchased from a shop on taobao.com turned out to be illegal.
The books were purchased at one-fifth of their market price, under the claim that they were sold at promotional prices, but they were obviously fake because there were wrongly printed words on almost every page, police said.
The publisher of the book titles Liang purchased later confirmed that those books were not printed under their supervision, according to the police.
Police managed to locate the gang in Suqian where the books were delivered from.
The suspects have allegedly owned up.