Housewife Who Returned Empty Boxes for Refunds to Pocket 100 Million Won... Ends Up in Prison

Abuse of Refund System by Only Checking Invoice Number
Sending Empty Boxes and Diverting Goods to Secondhand Transactions

A woman in her 30s was sentenced to prison for embezzling over 100 million won by sending only empty boxes when returning items purchased from online shopping malls. She also made double profits by selling the items she did not return on secondhand trading platforms.

According to the legal community on the 28th, Judge Jeong Geum-young of the Seoul Western District Court Criminal Division 4 sentenced A (37) to 1 year and 2 months in prison on the 23rd on charges of fraud.

[Photo by Pixabay]

A was indicted on charges of embezzling goods worth about 139 million won in total through 71 cases from January to October 2021 by applying for returns at two online shopping malls, receiving refunds, and not returning the items to the sellers.

A exploited the fact that online shopping malls automatically refund the money within three days once the return shipping invoice number is confirmed. She abused this by applying for refunds and sending only part of the product or empty boxes in the return packages to embezzle the goods.

The items not returned were found to have been sold as "new products" on secondhand trading platforms.

During the trial, A claimed that she intended to return all the items, but the courier company only collected some of them.

However, the court did not accept this. Considering that some return packages were completely empty and that even when multiple items were purchased from one place and could have been returned together, the items were sent one by one, the court judged that A had no intention of properly returning the goods.

Earlier in July, a woman in her 40s was also sentenced to prison for intentionally removing some items from orders placed on an online shopping mall and processing the entire return, gaining about 100 million won in profit.

From March 2018 to June 2019, this woman ordered multiple products on the Coupang site 391 times, returned only some of the items, and deceived Coupang into believing all items were returned to receive full refunds. This exploited the fact that Coupang’s refund process was automatically triggered as soon as a delivery worker received the return box from the customer. Coupang strengthened its refund policy last year as the number of black consumers abusing the "no questions asked refund" increased.