Anhui Suzhou cracks illegal vaping operation involving RMB 120 million: 21 people in 5 tiers arreste

Available in a variety of fruit flavors and packaged to resemble milk tea, these disguised e-cigarettes have quietly appeared around some primary and secondary schools. Recently, police in Suzhou, Anhui Province, dismantled an illegal e-cigarette trafficking network.

On January 11 this year, the Xiaoxian Tobacco Monopoly Bureau discovered in its work that some convenience stores, supermarkets, and stationery shops near local primary and secondary schools were selling e-cigarettes shaped like “Violent Bear” and “milk tea cups.” A number of schools also reported that parents said their children had purchased and used them. The Xiaoxian Tobacco Monopoly Bureau then transferred the case lead to the tobacco-related intelligence analysis unit of the Suzhou Public Security Bureau for assessment.

“These e-cigarettes mainly feature fruit flavors, and their target consumers are primarily teenagers. They are priced between RMB 50 and RMB 100. Some children are unaware of the dangers involved and think they are fun and fashionable, so they buy them and use them together, seriously harming the physical and mental health of minors and posing major social risks,” Ma Longfei, a third-level police sergeant with the Suzhou Public Security Bureau’s economic investigation detachment who participated in handling the case, told a reporter from Legal Daily.

According to reports, the tobacco-related intelligence analysis unit of the Suzhou Public Security Bureau was established in August 2021. It uses information technology to conduct in-depth intelligence analysis and provides important support for cracking down on illegal and criminal activities in the tobacco sector. Through tracking and analysis, police quickly identified a local merchant surnamed Jiang in Xiaoxian County. He was not only selling e-cigarettes around schools, but also acting as a seller on WeChat, shipping large quantities of non-compliant e-cigarette parcels through express delivery and logistics channels. The case involved a huge amount of money and extended to more than ten provinces nationwide.

Ma Longfei said that following the lead from Jiang, police uncovered his upstream suppliers, Zhou and Shi. The two are husband and wife. They had previously engaged in e-cigarette sales in Dongguan, Guangdong, but later moved to Pingxiang, Jiangxi, to evade law enforcement, where they also set up a storage warehouse.

In February this year, based on the intelligence transferred by the tobacco-related intelligence analysis unit, the Xiaoxian Public Security Bureau opened a case against Zhou, Shi, and others on suspicion of illegal business operations. Investigation found that the upstream criminal groups in this case were spread across Guangdong, Guangxi, and Jiangxi, forming a full-chain criminal network involving sourcing, e-commerce order-taking, e-cigarette sales, and logistics delivery.

“The group consisted of five tiers, with a clear organizational structure and orderly division of labor,” Ma said. At the top of the structure was a biotechnology company responsible for supplying e-liquid and other materials used to make e-cigarettes. They supplied e-liquid and related materials to three companies whose legal representatives were Yuan, Huang, and Ke, among others, which were engaged in e-cigarette assembly and production. Their subordinates then sold the products nationwide over the internet, with part of the products distributed to major agent Su.

According to reports, Su was a relevant executive of a technology company in Dongguan. Five company employees led by him were responsible for e-cigarette sales, warehousing, and transportation. Below Su were second-tier agents such as Zhou and Shi, who further distributed e-cigarette products. Su also used staff members Xu, Ou, and others to push e-cigarette advertisements on short-video platforms to attract traffic, then added customers through social media accounts for retail sales, with the e-cigarettes eventually flowing to grassroots retailers such as Jiang.

After identifying the group’s organizational structure and division of labor, the Suzhou Public Security Bureau further uncovered an illegal e-cigarette business network spanning 12 provinces, including Anhui, Guangdong, Fujian, and Guangxi, with a case value of RMB 120 million.

To thoroughly eliminate the group, under the command and deployment of the Economic Investigation Corps of the Anhui Provincial Public Security Department, the Suzhou Public Security Bureau assembled more than 100 personnel from multiple departments into a task force, dividing them into 21 arrest teams and dispatching them to Guangxi, Jiangxi, Guangdong, and other locations to carry out arrests.

“These people had a certain degree of anti-investigation awareness. Their shipping addresses and phone numbers were fake, and they carried out e-cigarette production secretly at night,” Ma told the reporter, recounting one detail. An e-cigarette factory in Dongguan was hidden inside a residential building. The building was a twin-tower structure, and during surveillance, officers noticed a very thin plastic pipe connecting the two buildings. It turned out that the two ends of the pipe were connected to two factories and used to transport e-liquid through the air. Through this pipeline, police shut down both factories in one stroke.

Recently, arrest teams closed in simultaneously in multiple locations and captured 21 suspects including Zhou, Yuan, and Su. According to the tally, authorities destroyed 4 e-cigarette factory production sites and 6 warehousing sites, and seized more than 110,000 illegal e-cigarette pods, vaping devices, and e-cigarette products, 7 pieces of e-cigarette manufacturing equipment, as well as large quantities of semi-finished e-cigarettes, e-liquid, production auxiliaries, and accessories. Investigating officers also continued expanding the results and later arrested 9 downstream sales personnel.

At present, the case remains under further investigation.