Chinese network thought to operate one of world's largest online scams’

More than 800,000 people in Europe and the US appear to have been duped into sharing card details and other sensitive personal data with a vast network of fake online designer shops apparently operated from China.

- Carmen Aguilar Garcia, Sarah Marsh, Philip McMahon

An international investigation by the Guardian, Die Zeit and Le Monde gives a rare inside look at the mechanics of what the UK's Chartered Trading Standards Institute has described as one of the largest scams of its kind, with 76,000 fake websites created.

Data examined by reporters and IT experts indicates the operation is highly organised, technically savvy - and still going on.

Operating on an huge scale, programmers have created tens of thousands of fake web shops offering discounted goods from Dior, Nike, Lacoste, Hugo Boss, Versace and Prada, as well as many other premium brands.

Published in languages including English, German, French, Spanish, Swedish and Italian, the websites appear to have been set up to lure shoppers into parting with money and sensitive personal data. However, the sites have no connection to the brands they claim to sell, and in most cases consumers who spoke about their experience said they received no items.

The first fake shops in the network appear to have been created in 2015. More than 1m "orders" have been processed in the past three years alone, according to analysis of the data.

Not all payments were successfully processed, but analysis suggests the group may have attempted to take as much as €50m (£43m) over the period. Many shops have been abandoned, but a third of them - more than 22,500 - are still live.

So far, an estimated 800,000 people, almost all in Europe and America, have shared email addresses, with 476,000 of them having shared debit and credit card details, including their three-digit security number. All of them also handed over names, phone numbers, email and postal addresses.