Feiyu staged a luxury-bag flash sale — then faked the result to deny the winner

Feiyu (妃鱼), founded in 2016, built China's biggest secondhand-luxury livestream business, raising nearly US$30 million in Series B funding in 2021 from N5Capital, Legend Capital and Matrix Partners China. Its model was simple: stream authenticated luxury goods on Taobao and Douyin, and let buyers compete in real time.

On 11 January 2024, Feiyu's Hangzhou branch ran a livestream flash sale for a red luxury handbag priced at ¥7,999, requiring buyers to compete by payment order. A single consumer won. The next day, Feiyu fabricated platform data to tell that buyer their order had not gone through, and pressed repeatedly for a refund. When the platform investigated, it confirmed the consumer was the sole valid purchaser.

In January 2025 the Baoshan District Market Supervision Administration fined Feiyu ¥200,000 for false marketing under the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. It was the first time Shanghai publicly penalised suspected fraud in luxury livestream selling — a signal that the category's grey zone of fake flash sales, phantom inventory and pressure tactics was on the regulator's list.

Feiyu fabricated platform data to cancel the sole winning order, then was fined ¥200,000 in Shanghai's first luxury livestream fraud enforcement.

The flash sale was fabricated: Feiyu faked page information to reverse the result after a buyer had already paid.

The company blamed a rogue operations team member, but the regulator held the company liable — internal delegation does not transfer legal responsibility.

Shanghai's market regulators made the case a public benchmark: the first enforcement action naming luxury livestream fraud specifically.

The secondhand-luxury livestream category had grown fast without trust infrastructure — high prices, hard-to-verify authenticity and pressure tactics made it a regulatory target.

A livestream platform that fakes its own flash-sale results has no flash sale to sell — the urgency was the product, and the fraud was the cost.

Feiyu's brand director said the incident was an unauthorised act by a former operations team and that staff had been disciplined or dismissed, but media called the response unconvincing. The case was highlighted amid broader regulatory action: China's livestream sector drew 402,000 consumer complaints in 2024, up 19.3% year-on-year, and the market regulator published draft Livestream E-Commerce Supervision Measures in June 2025.