The encyclopedia · Marketing & Brand · Marketing decision · 2025
Pengqianhua sold courses as a fake civil servant and a fake police officer
Private-domain streams sold courses on invented personas — civil servant, police officer — promising ¥10,000 a month. 115 buyers; ¥300,000 fine.
Foshan Pengqianhua Culture Media (佛山鹏浅花文化传媒有限公司) · 2026-04-29
What happened
From June to December 2025, Foshan Pengqianhua Culture Media sold online courses on 'No.2 e-commerce projects' through private-domain livestreams, building its pitch on invented personas: civil servant, police officer, business turnaround success. The streamer claimed to have passed Guangdong's civil-service exam, served as a police officer, then quit and made a fortune — and promised students monthly income over ¥10,000 if they joined the program.
The urgency was invented too: 'limited-time' discounts that were actually the ordinary price. When the Foshan Nanhai District Market Supervision Administration checked, the record did not match the story — the streamer had only briefly served as an auxiliary police officer, and cases of students earning the promised amounts were extremely rare. By the time of the investigation the company had sold courses to 115 people for ¥566,900 in total.
In December 2025 the administration fined the company ¥300,000 for false commercial publicity under the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, and separately ordered it to correct an unauthorized change of its registered address. On April 29, 2026 SAMR put the case first in its sixth batch of livestream-commerce enforcement examples — its exhibit on fake-persona course-selling in private-domain streams.
Why it happened
- The persona was the product: the credentials and income claims that sold the course were invented.
- Private-domain streams moved the pitch off the open platform, where it was harder for viewers or moderators to check.
- Fabricated limited-time discounts created urgency at prices that were never discounted.
The lesson
A persona is a set of claims, and claims need evidence. The 'former police officer' was briefly an auxiliary officer and the ¥10,000 monthly income rarely arrived — 115 buyers, a ¥300,000 fine.
Aftermath
SAMR published the case on April 29, 2026, first among five examples: beside it sat a fake seedling-survival claim, a 200-phone fake-popularity farm, an unreviewed medical-device ad and a billiards club that never verified its streamer's identity — its ¥1,000 fine imposed under the new Measures for the Supervision of Livestream E-commerce.
Sources
- The Beijing News — SAMR releases sixth batch of livestream-commerce typical cases (case 1: Pengqianhua), 2026-04-29
- China Food Safety Network — SAMR publishes sixth batch of livestream-commerce typical cases, 2026-04-29
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