By the age of 27, computer whiz Wang Lei had made more than ten million yuan from a plagiarism detection website he developed while still at school. But the Jiangsu man is no Chinese Mark Zuckerberg – he was arrested for stealing.
Police launched an investigation after receiving complaints from a “well-known” website which provides similar services. This website reported that a large amount of theses in their database had been “stolen” and they had traced it to a website called “3PS”. This website belonged to Wang.
Wang confessed he stole much of the data using a software he developed at school. This could get around online databases’ security systems, enabling him to obtain theses stored in their databases. The software worked automatically, Wang explained.
According to police, websites providing plagiarism detection services often require a hundred staffers or more. Wang’s website only had a few employees. Because Wang ran the operation at very little cost, he could charge the website’s services cheaply – only 10 yuan per one million words. Similar services provided by other websites cost hundreds of yuan, a police spokesman said.
This gave Wang’s website a tremendous edge in the market. In only a 10-day period last December, police said Wang’s website had generated massive revenue – over 1.5 million yuan.