Recently in China, a beer manufacturer called the police after noticing abnormalities in prize-redeeming pull tabs. Police arrested the suspect, Chen, who had purchased over 37,000 blank lids to forge "Try Again" prize messages, and had been fraudulently redeeming beer across districts for more than half a year, ultimately paying the price for his actions.
Chen, in his fifties, usually works on construction sites. He explained that his financial situation was tight at the time, and wanting to supplement his family's income, he decided to try his luck with a dishonest scheme. In mid-2025, after drinking a can of beer, Chen noticed that the prize information on the can pull tab was relatively easy to imitate, which gave him the idea to make counterfeit pull tabs to exchange for free beer.
Chen was quick to act on his idea. He purchased more than 37,500 blank can lids in batches via online shopping platforms, hired someone to print fake "Try Again" prize messages on them, and then packed the pull tabs as prize redemption tokens. To avoid arousing suspicion from dealers, Chen deliberately chose supermarkets across multiple neighborhoods in Wenzhou to redeem them.
He used a "small amount, many times" strategy, only redeeming 2 to 4 cases of beer each time at each supermarket, then changing locations, using "guerrilla" tactics to reduce the risk of being discovered. With this method, Chen was able to fraudulently redeem beer for over half a year from mid-2025, without being caught in the act.
By February of this year, the beer manufacturer noticed some of the prize pull tabs had blurry printing, or even missing letters, and the number of redeemed pull tabs greatly exceeded the odds of winning, prompting them to call the police.
"Could someone be making counterfeit prize pull tabs?" With this suspicion, officers from the Yangyi Police Station quickly launched an investigation. Through canvassing and inquiries, they soon identified Chen as the suspect, as he was frequently seen in liquor stores, every time presenting a bag full of prize pull tabs. Police promptly arrested him on the spot and seized over 2,000 fake prize pull tabs.
"We advised Chen too, since he had that much drive, delivering food part-time could easily earn him more than he did forging pull tabs. We hope he makes good use of his abilities after his sentence and doesn't go down the wrong path again," said one police officer.
Chen confessed that he realized during the process that it wasn't really worth it; not only did he not make as much money as he'd expected, he also put in a huge amount of time and effort. However, since he'd already invested money in materials and printing the pull tabs, he felt he had to at least recoup his costs, so he kept committing the crime until he was finally caught.
Currently, Chen has been criminally detained by the police on suspicion of fraud, and the case is under further investigation.