In just 0.02 seconds, "scalpers" can grab an expert account from a popular hospital. Ordinary patients can't get expert numbers for weeks, while some criminals can register more than 5000 times a year. The "scalpers" who sell hospital account sources are also known as "account dealers". In order to solve the problem of people's difficulty in getting medical treatment, recently, the police in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province carried out centralized arrests in many places, successfully ending three "hacker scalpers" gangs that illegally invaded the hospital registration system, and arrested 22 suspect, involving more than 2 million yuan. After investigation, illegal elements seized the source of hospital expert accounts in bulk through specially designed software, and then resold them to patients in urgent need of treatment at a high price, or used the method of "occupying pits and washing accounts" to stir up some popular expert accounts to more than 1000 yuan. What kind of interest chain is hidden behind these chaos? The reporter conducted an in-depth investigation. At the end of last year, Mr. Qu, who lives in Baoying County, Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, fell ill and needed to seek medical treatment in Nanjing. He searched online and found that a doctor from a tertiary hospital in Jiangsu Province happened to be good at treating his illness. The WeChat official account of this hospital is released at 6 pm every day. Mr. Qu set the alarm clock and came to grab the number at a fixed time, but he kept fighting for a week and the result was always a flash. Helpless, Mr. Qu had to look for "scalpers" online to handle it on his behalf. According to Mr. Qu's recollection, on December 24, 2024, he added a "scalper" with the WeChat nickname "Hospital Help" online. The other party told him that by paying a 300 yuan agency fee, he could help secure the appointment with this expert's account. If the registration was unsuccessful, the fee would be refunded in full. Mr. Qu transferred the 300 yuan agency fee to "Hospital Help" with a trial mentality, and sent the information such as his registered username and password on the registration platform to the other party. At around 9pm the next night, "Hospital Help" replied that they had already registered and could transfer the registration fee. For this reason, Mr. Qu was very puzzled: "Why can't I hang up the account while 'Yellow Bull' can? Is there any unknown secret behind it?" During the interview, the reporter found that Mr. Qu's doubts were very common among patients. Under the illegal operation of "scalpers", the expert accounts of some well-known experts in hospitals have been inflated to over a thousand yuan, and many patients have to accept "high priced accounts" in order to receive treatment as soon as possible. At the beginning of 2025, the Nanjing police received multiple reports from the public that the number one expert from several well-known hospitals was difficult to obtain and was snatched up in the moment of release. This not only makes patients feel very helpless, but also causes great distress to the hospital. Why is the division of labor among illegal gangs forming a chain comparable to that of factory assembly line experts always "lightning fast"? What is the crux of the problem? The Nanjing Public Security Bureau has established a special task force on this issue. Li Haidong, Deputy District Chief of Qinhuai District and Director of Qinhuai Branch of Nanjing Public Security Bureau, led a team to visit the hospital and investigate the abnormal situation of hospital registration. The project team first retrieved more than 40000 registration records of the hospital in the past year, and carried out a comparative analysis and screening of the registration information of popular experts in the past year, and found many anomalies: the same IP address, using different ID number for high-frequency registration in a short time; Several third-party accounts, such as Alipay and WeChat, have abnormal number of registered payment information, and individual accounts have more than 5000 payment records a year, far exceeding the frequency of medical treatment for normal patients. The task force analyzed that behind these abnormal data, it is highly likely that there are one or more well-organized and technologically advanced criminal gangs hidden. Through the analysis and tracking of these abnormal data, the police gradually identified the black industry chain of "scalpers" who use technology to steal accounts and resell for profit, and separately targeted three criminal gangs led by Cao, Ni, and Yu. The criminal gang led by Cao first surfaced. Cao is a software engineer. Between 2023 and 2024, the "scalper" Zhong approached Cao to help develop a software that could "compete for numbers". Driven by profit, Cao readily agreed. Yao Xiang, Deputy Chief of Criminal Police Brigade of Qinhuai Branch of Nanjing Public Security Bureau, told reporters that ordinary patients have to go through "levels of checkpoints" when registering via the Internet. The system needs to verify the patient's identity. The patient needs to manually enter the verification code and refresh the page. The process from logging in to the system, filling in information to successful payment takes at least one minute. But Cao took a different approach. He specialized in purchasing books about cyber hackers, researching ways to crack hospital registration systems, and even spared no expense in buying high-performance graphics cards to keep them running day and night. Eventually, he cracked the layers of passwords in the hospital registration system and developed his own account stealing software. With this "weapon" for grabbing numbers, all verification steps in the system can be skipped, and the process of grabbing numbers can be completed in one step. That's why as long as the patient's personal information is entered into the number grabbing software developed by Cao, when the hospital releases the number, it can instantly "kill". Yan Yaohua, a police officer from the Qinhuai Branch of the Network Security Detachment of the Nanjing Public Security Bureau, said that according to their actual measurements, using Cao's self-developed software to grab a rare expert account only takes 0.02 seconds, which is 3000 times more efficient than normal registration channels. It can be said that "scalpers" use software to grab accounts, achieving a "dimensionality reduction strike" on ordinary patients. As the investigation deepened, the modus operandi of two other criminal gangs also came to light. The gang led by Ni and the gang led by Yu also used similar customized software to grab accounts, the difference being that they adopted the method of "occupying pits and washing accounts", and then targeted and resold these expert accounts. With the successive arrests of criminals, a "black chain" comparable to a factory assembly line has also surfaced. In Cao's gang, the technical team is responsible for writing code to grab accounts. The first level "scalpers" wholesale account sources, and the second level "scalpers" are responsible for attracting customers. A 300 yuan expert account can be sold for 1200 yuan or even more after two transactions. The gang involved in the case arbitrarily seized the source of hospital numbers and then resold them at high prices for huge profits, seriously disrupting the normal medical order, "Yao Xiang said. On the morning of May 15, after sufficient evidence was obtained, more than 90 special case police went to Henan, Anhui, Nanjing and other places to carry out centralized network collection operations. Three "scalpers" who illegally invaded the hospital registration system were destroyed at one stroke, and 22 suspect were arrested, 18 of whom had been taken criminal coercive measures by the police. In the process of innovating the work mechanism from "handling one case" to "governing one domain" investigation, investigators are also considering the loopholes in the relevant links of medical registration. How to do a good job in using cases to promote reform in the "second half of the article" and achieve the transition from "handling one case" to "governing one domain"? Yao Xiang told reporters that during the investigation, the police found that the criminal gang led by Ni used the method of "occupying pits and washing accounts", which does not require high technical requirements for account snatching software, but is still "effective". Mainly exploiting loopholes in the system, "Yao Xiang said. Originally, the gang purchased over 300 mobile phone numbers through the internet, and when the hospital released the numbers, they would use the purchased phone numbers to compete for them. Seizing the hospital's number pool has resulted in ordinary patients not being able to get their numbers, and can only find "scalpers". When recruiting a patient, the illegal personnel will return a previously "seized" expert account and use the patient's information to instantly retrieve it. Although this model does not require high software technology, it poses greater harm. ”Yao Xiang said that previously, the illegal elements of the gang used software to seize all the accounts of a certain expert for a day. However, when the expert was attending, due to not recruiting enough patients, all the occupied expert accounts were not sold and had to be temporarily refunded. But at this point, even if there are many vacancies, ordinary patients have no time to register. The patient cannot hang up and the expert cannot wait for the patient, wasting valuable medical resources in vain. With the investigation of this case, multiple hospitals in Nanjing have discovered similar issues and have filled this loophole by upgrading their systems. For example, a certain hospital has launched a "standby number". If a patient cannot get the number, they can first hang up a "standby number". Once someone cancels the number earlier, the patient who has hung up the "standby number" can be ranked first. Yao Xiang said that although solving the case can plug the loopholes in medical registration, they hope to take the investigation of this case as an opportunity to promote regular communication and consultation between the police and medical departments, establish a linkage mechanism between the police and health departments, actively discover problems, achieve "rapid response and coordinated operation", and jointly crack down on illegal and criminal activities such as drug traffickers disrupting medical order. At the same time, public security organs should also leverage their professional advantages to guide and supervise hospitals to optimize their registration processes and upgrade their registration systems. Only by continuously innovating mechanisms can we fundamentally control the chaos of 'scalpers', "said Yao Xiang. (New Society)