通过社交平台销售添加禁药的减肥咖啡获利17万余元，得知消费者出现不良反应后继续卖，张某静获刑34个月

Brief (coffeeyo.com): On September 22, China’s top two prosecutorial bodies released typical cases on online food-safety crimes, including the sibutramine “weight-loss coffee” case — a reminder that selling banned substances through social platforms is covert, harmful, and punishable.

On the morning of September 22, the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate jointly released typical cases punishing online food-safety crimes in accordance with the law. Among them was the case of Zhang moujing and Ma mou selling toxic and harmful food — “weight-loss coffee” illegally adulterated with sibutramine sold through social-network platforms.

The case shows that from November 2021 to August 2024, Zhang moujing, a merchant in Bairin Right Banner, Inner Mongolia, without a food-business license and without verifying her suppliers’ qualification and inspection certificates, contacted six merchants through e-commerce platforms to discuss agency arrangements, then purchased “weight-loss coffee” branded “Blue Coffee” and “Black Coffee” and resold it through social-network platforms and a network of downstream agents, for total sales of more than 170,000 yuan. From 2022 to 2024, the defendant Ma mou, acting as Zhang’s downstream agent, bought “Blue Coffee” and “Black Coffee” and sold them via social platforms for about 17,000 yuan.

During sales, Zhang’s suppliers went silent and frequently changed collection accounts; some consumers reported weakness, palpitations, nausea, and sweating after taking the products, and an individual who felt unwell commissioned a test, found sibutramine, and informed the seller. Zhang and Ma kept selling even after learning of this. Testing confirmed sibutramine in both the “Blue Coffee” and “Black Coffee” involved in the case.

Sibutramine (image source: China Narcotic Control).

In the end, the People’s Procuratorate of Bairin Right Banner prosecuted Zhang and Ma for selling toxic and harmful food. The People’s Court of Bairin Right Banner found that the defendants, in violation of national food-safety regulations, sold food they knew contained toxic and harmful non-food raw materials, constituting the crime of selling toxic and harmful food. Zhang’s sales exceeded 100,000 yuan but fell short of 200,000 yuan, and the offending period lasted more than six months, legally qualifying as “other serious circumstances.” Both defendants turned themselves in and pleaded guilty and accepted punishment; the court thus gave Zhang a mitigated punishment and Ma a lighter one.

Accordingly, the court sentenced Zhang to two years and ten months in prison and fined her 350,000 yuan, and Ma to one year in prison and fined him 50,000 yuan, for the crime of selling toxic and harmful food. No appeal or protest was filed within the statutory period, and the judgment has taken legal effect.

Sibutramine may increase the risk of serious cardiovascular events and is explicitly banned from addition to food. Unlike open sales channels such as e-commerce platforms and livestream commerce, in the social-platform sales model the defendants used online promotion, private negotiation, and electronic payment, making the activity highly covert and easy to shield from supervision. In this case, the defendant Zhang leveraged the customer base built by her physical store to promote on social platforms and recruit downstream agents, greatly increasing the difficulty for administrative and judicial organs to gather evidence and creating serious social harm.

Comprehensive report by Jimu News.

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