Italy has dismantled a network of over 13,000 fraudulent e-commerce sites

The Postal Police has dismantled a network of over 13,000 fake e-commerce sites, often designed to be confused with the official sites of some well-known chains dedicated to electronic products. The sites in question offered some highly requested products – such as the PlayStation 5 -, often referring to very aggressive (but still plausible) discounts and prices. Too bad that once the customer’s money was taken, the e-commerce didn’t send anything at all and the site was closed shortly thereafter.

In short, a textbook fraud. Due to the extent of the fraud and the number of sites involved, the news of the operation went around the world, also being picked up by some international media, including Bloomberg.

The network had been identified by Yarix, an Italian cybersecurity firm, which then provided the results of its investigation to the Postal Police.

The network is allegedly run by a group of Chinese cybercriminals, who for several years have been defrauding Italian customers by offering them products of luxury brands at discounted prices or by sending them counterfeit products or by not sending any products after the customer has paid.

The perpetrators of the scam had managed to hide their tracks, thanks to the use of a global network of data centers created with the aim of confusing investigators and making any investigative activity more complicated. At first glance, 90% of the infrastructure appeared to be distributed between the United States, Panama and Turkey. A more in-depth investigation made it possible to trace some data centers also located in Europe.