TWENTY-FIVE people have been detained for allegedly stealing more than 12 million yuan (US$1.8 million) from a commercial website, police said yesterday.

The accused used software to buy millions yuan worth of gift cards from the website with just 0.1 to 1 yuan, said police in Putuo District who are leading the case.

The gift cards were then sold through second-hand trading platforms such as Xianyu of Alibaba at about 60 or 65 percent of their face value.

The investigation started late last year when eHi Car Services, a car rental company, complained to police that more than 2,000 gift cards were bought this way, which cost the company 12 million yuan.

One of the suspects, a man surnamed Zhang who was a junior student from a university in Anhui Province, told police he had bought 697,000 yuan worth of gift cards with 10.1 yuan on the website, police said.

Zhang said he bought the software for 1,000 yuan from a person he met through an internet group and later sold it to others at hundreds to thousands of yuan.