“有毒有害”咖啡、幽灵外卖！“两高”最新公布

Brief (coffeeyo.com): The five typical cases released this time focus on online food-safety crime patterns, covering the manufacture and sale of fake honey and substandard infant formula via e-commerce platforms, the sale of weight-loss press-tablets and weight-loss coffee illegally laced with drugs via livestream and social platforms, and the forging or trading of business licenses and food-operation permits to register “ghost stores” for resale profit.

The five typical cases released this time focus on online food-safety crime patterns, covering the manufacture and sale of fake honey and substandard infant formula via e-commerce platforms, the sale of weight-loss press-tablets and weight-loss coffee illegally laced with drug ingredients via livestream-ecommerce and social-network platforms, and the forging or trading of business licenses and food-operation permits to register “ghost stores” for resale profit, among other online food-safety crime patterns. The cases are highly typical and representative.

Registering “ghost delivery” stores for resale profit

Among them, forging or trading business licenses and food-operation permits to register “ghost stores” for resale profit is a network-crime pattern involving food safety that has emerged in recent years, and is the source crime of the “ghost delivery” violation. The release of related cases by the judiciary will serve as a warning by example and strongly deter “ghost delivery” and related crimes.

Specifically, defendant Luo Mouhua, for illegal gain, used photo-editing software to forge business licenses and food-operation permits, advertised via social-network platforms and through friend referrals to solicit clients, and sold them at 50 to 300 yuan each to multiple provinces and cities including Jiujiang, Jiangxi — forging and selling a total of 3,961 official documents, illegally profiting over 360,000 yuan. From March 2025, defendant Chen Moufu assisted Luo Mouhua in forging 1,170 documents, profiting over 20,000 yuan. Defendants Nie Mouwei, Wang Mou’nan, Yang Mouhuan, Zhang Mouhong, Wang Mouqi, and Hu Mouwei, six in total, for illegal gain, forged on their own or bought forged licenses and permits (20 to 150-plus each) from Luo Mouhua, then used the fake permits to register stores on delivery platforms and resold them to others to operate, extracting fees or operating commissions and illegally profiting 2,000 to 30,000-plus yuan each, causing unqualified personnel to operate delivery-platform stores in violation of rules and sell food outward.

The court sentenced Luo Mouhua to six years’ imprisonment and a 100,000-yuan fine for forging and trading official documents; Chen Moufu to three years and six months and a 10,000-yuan fine; Nie Mouwei to two years and six months and a 10,000-yuan fine; and Wang Mou’nan and the other five to fixed terms of one year ten months to one year two months with fines for trading official documents.

“In practice, some delivery-platform operators fail to strictly implement their food-safety primary responsibilities, neglecting review of operating qualifications and filing information of online food operators; some individual platform operators even intentionally tolerate the registration and operation of ‘ghost delivery’ stores to expand operations and grab market share,” said the Supreme People’s Procuratorate. The judiciary’s severe punishment of Luo Mouhua and others for forging and trading official documents will help purify the online food-market environment and deter “ghost delivery” offenders. Meanwhile, strengthening food-safety oversight of delivery-platform restaurants requires platform operators to fulfill their primary responsibilities, strictly reviewing qualifications and filing information of online food operators, and holding the food-safety line.

Selling “toxic” and “harmful” weight-loss coffee via social platforms

In another case, Zhang Moujing, a merchant in Bairin Right Banner, Inner Mongolia, without food-operation qualifications and without verifying suppliers’ qualification certificates or inspection reports, contacted six merchants via e-commerce platforms to discuss agency, purchased weight-loss coffee abbreviated “Blue Coffee” and “Black Coffee,” and sold it externally via social-network platforms and by developing downstream agents, with total sales over 170,000 yuan.

From 2022 to 2024, defendant Ma Mou, as Zhang Moujing’s downstream agent, bought “Blue Coffee” and “Black Coffee” and sold them via social platforms, totaling over 17,000 yuan. During sales, Zhang’s supplier went silent and frequently changed collection accounts; some consumers reported weakness, palpitations, nausea, and sweating after taking the products, and an individual, feeling unwell, commissioned testing that found sibutramine and informed the seller. Zhang and Ma continued selling after learning this. Testing identified sibutramine in both “Blue Coffee” and “Black Coffee.” The court sentenced Zhang Moujing to two years ten months’ imprisonment and a 350,000-yuan fine, and Ma Mou to one year and a 50,000-yuan fine, for selling toxic and harmful food.

“Sibutramine may increase serious cardiovascular risk and is explicitly banned from food in China. Unlike open sales on e-commerce and livestream channels, the social-platform sales model — with online promotion, private negotiation and payment, and electronic settlement — is highly concealed and easily evades oversight,” the Supreme Procuratorate explained. In this case, defendant Zhang Moujing leveraged the customer base built from a physical store, promoted on social platforms, and developed subordinate agents; the strong concealment increased the difficulty of evidence collection for administrative and judicial authorities and posed serious social harm.

According to the Supreme Procuratorate, with the rapid development of e-commerce platforms in recent years, online food sales have become increasingly active, greatly facilitating consumer demand. At the same time, some lawbreakers exploit cyberspace’s characteristics, use algorithm recommendations to precisely lock onto target customers, and artificially boost product search rankings through organized fake transactions and online brushing, achieving rapid traffic. In social-platform and livestream sales models, they also evade platform oversight via private negotiation or euphemistic wording, causing food-safety risks to spread faster and wider with greater harm than traditional offline sales. Moreover, some platform operators fail to implement food-safety primary responsibilities, loosely reviewing qualifications and filing information of online food operators; some lawbreakers blatantly forge and trade fake permits and use them to register on delivery platforms for food-production and -sales activities, planting food-safety hazards and increasing oversight difficulty.

For the five criminal typical cases released this time, the judiciary coordinated with market-regulation departments to drive investigation and governance, pressed platform operators’ primary responsibilities, and extended from individual-case punishment to industry governance, achieving the effect of “handling one case, governing a field.” The People’s Court and the People’s Procuratorate stated that next they will fully implement General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important instructions on food safety and the Party Central Committee’s decisions, strictly enforce the “four strictest” requirements, severely punish online food-safety crimes according to law, actively participate in comprehensive social governance, and practically safeguard people’s health and life safety, promoting a network food-consumption environment satisfactory to the people.

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