Fraudulent Scheme Unveiled: Thousands of Accounts Created to Defraud Farmers

Imagine you’re a farmer, your livelihood hinging on a successful cabbage crop.

Lately, though, your seedlings haven’t been thriving, causing you considerable worry.

One evening, seeking respite from your concerns, you find yourself scrolling through social media and stumble upon a stream of videos promising “miracle agriculture hacks,” all endorsed by apparent experts.

“This could be the solution,” you think.

Intrigued, you click on a video. The “expert” claims that common household items can effectively combat pests and dramatically increase crop yields. And the best part? It’s all free, a genuine attempt to help farmers like yourself.

The example given? Dilute white vinegar with water, spray it on your vegetables, and watch celery stems strengthen, cabbage core rot decrease, and even boost your leek production, a technique many experienced farmers swear by, according to the video!

The comments section is flooded with farmers just like you, eager to learn the specifics: How much water? What strength vinegar? When’s the best time to apply? A picture of harmony and shared knowledge.

Now, with the image of your wilting cabbage patch fresh in your mind, you feel a surge of hope. You have vinegar in your kitchen. Tomorrow, you’ll give it a shot. These experts wouldn’t steer you wrong, would they?

But as you keep scrolling, the algorithms keep providing similar “miracle” recipes.

One day it’s white vinegar for everything. The next, it’s salt water on peppers for a bumper harvest. Then, it’s laundry detergent and baking soda for pest control. One video even suggests a pint of beer sprayed on the soil is equal to two sacks of fertilizer!

It’s as if any random pantry staple can solve every imaginable agricultural problem…

Just as you start to question things, the algorithm serves up yet another white vinegar video.

Compile all these alleged benefits, and you reach an astounding conclusion: a single bottle of white vinegar can single-handedly solve virtually every challenge in agriculture.

From weed control to pest eradication to growth enhancement, it supposedly works on every vegetable, fruit tree, and flower imaginable.

A nagging feeling of unease begins to creep in.

If these homebrewed concoctions are so powerful, why are companies investing billions in research and development of pesticides and fertilizers? Wouldn’t agricultural science as a whole be obsolete?

White vinegar, twice a day?!

You might be wondering “Do people actually believe this stuff?”

Well, many of these videos boast tens of thousands of likes, saves, and shares.

One video advocating white vinegar treatments, for instance, had 49,000 likes and 22,000 saves. Data reveals it racked up an astonishing 2.22 million views hinting at the sheer number of viewers these videos reach.

With a sense of concern, and perhaps a touch of skepticism, I decided to dig deeper into these “pro-farmer” videos.

First off, using kitchen ingredients to combat pests *is* a practice, but it’s definitely not as simple as diluting something with water and spraying it on crops as a cure-all.

One common and somewhat legitimate recipe is a sugar-vinegar solution made with brown sugar, alcohol, vinegar, and water mixed in specific ratios to attract pests that are sensitive to those scents.

The problem is that the “audience” for this is extremely limited, and in no way is a catch-all solution.

Research shows that mainstream methods with sugar vinegar mix actually involve hanging containers between plants, rather than spraying the crop.

Also, the proper ratios vary for different crops. Cotton aphids are a major pest for wolfberries, so you’ll want more sugar in the mix, but cherry orchards need to target fruit flies, so you’d need to emphasize the alcohol. In short, it’s a delicate game.

Techniques like sugar vinegar mixes are broadly considered “non-pesticide methods.”

In 2021, the Lingtai County Fruit Industry Office of Gansu Province conducted research on apple orchards, finding 15 effective non-pesticide methods that included sugar vinegar mix plus:

Installing insecticidal lamps that lure beetles along with others. Applying glue to plastic sheets hung in tree canopies for beetles and aphids. Even routine tasks like ground cleaning and shallow tilling, as weeds and tree bases are where bugs hibernate.

This type of research is widespread among agricultural offices who regularly research and summarize effective methods. You could just ask somebody, right?

“Pro-farmer tricks” have merit and pose a lot of danger at the same time.

For one thing, older farmers tend to take things at face value, and results can take days or weeks to materialize, leaving time for bad information to spread.

So, what happens when someone bets the farm on one of these miracle cures?

Many farmers have tried these hacks, and posted their results: it’s a flop.

So why are these videos popping up everywhere?

These videos are ostensibly for farmers, but are actually against them.

From the personalities they portray to the scripting and video editing, they’re cookie cutter products.

They all build credibility as agricultural professors or experts, and then capture your attention with simple, drastic stunts and “hacks” as they end the video prompting you to like and follow.

Once they build an organic audience, that’s when they unleash the sales pitch to promote and profit to cash in big.

Given the scale of what we’re up against, and the lack of originality, it’s no surprise that these scams have grown into massive operations.

CCTV’s *Financial Investigation* went under cover with “Teacher Shi” from Xianghe Agriculture, which signs and hatches agricultural influencers to boost sales. Shi is one of the founders.

Shi said they have over 100 accounts across the company that are run by employees with absolutely no agriculture expertise and no education in the field.

He said “it’s 100% fake, it’s all an act.”

He also boasted to the undercover journalist on how one of his videos got over one million views and he made one dollar per view, earning him $400,000 – $500,000 in pure profit on that video alone.

Source: Financial Investigation

The Xianghe Agriculture incident has just unveiled the tip of the spear.

Nonetheless, this model of linking expertise with traffic to profit from formulaic deceit is not something that was built overnight.

As much as we hate to admit it, it’s become a societal phenomenon.

This model is common in fields that require specialized knowledge and practice such as agriculture, law, and medicine.

It can be split up into three stages:

These fields have a high barrier to entry with rigid requirements and schooling, causing people to naturally trust these experts when they turn to social media.

Then, the strong and articulate of these expert begin to enjoy the fame and recognition, providing quality insight with high standards and ethics and finding themselves going viral.

Source: bilibili @reallydonotwanttobenamed

In doing so, there’s a knowledge cap, and you have to know how to articulate your knowledge on top of that, raising the bar to even start. Success is rare.

That’s were MCNs come in to provide support.

Third party organizations get paid a monthly fee from the professional or organization to manage the account.

Other than that, there’s the management + cut model where the upfront is much less, the the MCNs takes a percentage of revenue.

Industry experts reveal that most law firms and attorneys tend to try and get cases through sales teams or internal means.

Over time with the rise of the individual IP on the Internet, law firms try engaging with MCNs to catch cases online. One new case is enough to bring clients for entire firm, not just a particular attorney.

Different models exist that seek fame, lead generation, or boost the firm IP.

The content creation is not something they need help with as attorneys can often come up with the content themes themselves. However, they often miss the pain points and how to create a viral moment, which is where MCNs pitch in.

Most of them do not provide high quality content.

“Mostly the online scripts are plagarized, and the attorneys say it’s ridiculous! Because they barely explain what’s being said or explain it terribly just to catch attention without really addressing the potential dangers.”

Doctors and attorneys are often required to have licenses and certifications to avoid fakes.

However, what they say has nothing to do with their expertise, and they often end up just being actors in a script that’s been written for them.

Even certified roles can be affected by this when those without one are hit even harder.

The ultimate secret is that it doesn’t matter who is on camera, it only matters if the persona stands.

So, they go straight to hiring actors, stick him in a veterinarian’s office, stick him in scrubs, and put him in front of the set.

Even though the certifications are meant to be strictly enforced, criminals are still defying authorities.

From the persona to the scripts to the product, it’s all fake.

The only goal is to collect clicks and cut their losses.

Under this traffic-focused writing, real experts become irrelevant as the actors start taking the scene.

Perhaps in the future we learn to distinct experts and actors.

Who knows who’s hiding behind the veterinarian’s coat.