(Yicai Global) April 28 -- Food delivery provider and consumer product e-tailer Meituan Dianping has investigated 12 cases of criminal corruption and referred 33 persons implicated in this grift to the police since January.

Seven of these persons are Meituan employees who took backhanders, while 26 others who work for its partners paid bribes or otherwise cheated for discounts, The Paper reported today.

Meituan will never work with partners who are found to engage in fraudulent practices and resort to bribery and will help others report their employees’ misdeeds, the firm said.

The Beijing-based company announced for the first time 10 corruption cases with the real names of persons involved via an internal e-mail in May 2017. These involved accepting bribes from or defrauding merchants, stealing users’ personal information, and gaining benefits from click farming. Meituan investigated 29 criminal cases of corruption and other violations and referred 89 persons implicated in these to police in 2018, according to the firm. It looked into 38 crimes involving 20 of its employees and an employee at one of its partners last year.

Of Meituan’s three core businesses, bunko often bedevils its conventional food takeout delivery services, the sale of its merchants’ vouchers, and its hotel and travel segment, details the firm has released for previous years show. Click farming is a constant temptation because Meituan has been preserving market share by offering plump incentives to its merchants and users since its founding in 2010.

Click farming is a form of click fraud in which a mass of workers are deployed to click on paid advertising links. These clicksters also often surf a targeted website and sometimes sign up for announcements.

Editor: Ben Armour