Poizon's 'authenticate first' model failed — 50% inspection failure, court ruled fraud

Poizon (得物, formerly '毒') launched in 2015 as a sneaker information app and pivoted to trading in 2017 with a promise that set it apart in China's wild west of online resale: 'authenticate first, ship later.' Every item sold on the platform was supposedly verified by Poizon's experts before reaching the buyer. The model attracted over 100 million registered users by 2019, with annual sales of 60–70 billion RMB, and investors including ByteDance and Hupu.

But the authentication system repeatedly failed public scrutiny. In June 2020, the China Consumers Association named Poizon in its 618 shopping festival report, collecting 8,735 negative complaints in 20 days over counterfeit goods, authentication fees, and coupons. In January 2022, the Shanghai Market Supervision Bureau抽查ed products sold on live-streaming e-commerce platforms — Poizon's failure rate was 50%, the highest among the nine platforms tested, with problems including mislabeled materials and substandard goods passed off as premium.

The legal reckoning came in March 2025, when a Beijing internet court ruled that Poizon had committed fraud by selling a Swarovski necklace as 'authentic' without authorization from the brand. The court ordered Poizon to refund the purchase price plus triple compensation (退一赔三). Separately, in 2023 a Poizon employee was convicted of accepting bribes from merchants in exchange for better placement on the platform.

Behind the scandals was a systemic issue: Poizon's authentication centers relied on temp workers paid by the day, checking over 1,000 items each daily under a punitive fine system that drove high turnover. By 2026, Black Cat complaints platform showed over 140,000 complaints against Poizon. The company claims 600 million users and 1.6 billion authentication services, but its core promise — that every item is verified — had been repeatedly and publicly broken.