When you’re in the market for a jersey or hat to represent your favorite team, you know that the gear being hawked out on the sidewalk near the stadium is probably not legitimate. Online, things get fuzzier, and sellers of counterfeit merchandise pop back up faster than law enforcement, trademark holders, and even the marketplace sites can knock them down. [More]
fakes
eBay Using Pro Authenticators To Spot Counterfeit Items
By 1.12.17
Even though eBay is really just a middle-man, giving buyers and sellers a platform to transact business, it doesn’t want those buyers being conned into paying for counterfeit items, or sellers unloading potentially illegal knockoffs. [More]
If You’re Not Sure That Mark Hamill Autograph Is Legit, Just Ask Mark Hamill
By 12.28.15
We know. You love everything that has to do with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and that includes Mark Hamill. But before you shell out the big bucks for that piece of memorabilia bearing Luke Skywalker’s signature, you might want to check its authenticity with the source itself: Mark Hamill (or Luke Skywalker, depending on your grasp on reality). [More]
Really Cheap Tires? Surprise: They Might Be Risky Counterfeits
By 11.17.14
Everyone knows that the “genuine designer handbag” going for $20 from a street vendor is neither genuine nor designer, and indeed may not even hold up as a bag. But when you go to a reputable retailer and spend what it costs to replace the tires on your car, you expect to get what the real goods. Alas, Consumer Reports has found: just because there’s a brand name you know on the outside of a tire, doesn’t mean you’re getting what you should be. [More]
Double-Dipping Resale Scammers Targeted Spanish Speakers With Fake Designer Goods
By 1.2.14
At the urging of the FTC, a court in California has shut down a telemarketing racket that has a little bit of everything: resale scams, fake designer goods, and illegal legal threats. It’s a scam trifecta! [More]
Sellers Of Imitation “Exclusively Authorized” 9/11 Commemorative Coins To Pay $750,000
By 1.17.13
Back in 2010, with the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the horizon, Congress authorized the U.S. Mint to produce and sell a commemorative medal. But that didn’t stop one company from advertising imitation versions it called “exclusively authorized” 9/11 commemorative dollar coins. [More]
Apple Removes App That Let Users Make Fake Driver's Licenses
By 12.12.11
Well, that was quick. On Friday, we wrote about the iOS app that allowed users to craft fake driver’s licenses — for the sole purpose of entertaining and amusing their friends, of course — and how one U.S. Senator had appealed to Apple CEO Tim Cook to have it removed from Apple’s online store. Looks like that may have been sufficient, as the app has is no longer on sale. [More]
5 Commonly Counterfeited Items To Avoid Buying
By 12.2.11
It’s one thing to purchase a generic or store-brand product that has the same ingredients or components but at a lower price; and a completely different thing to buy a truly counterfeit product that might save you cash but could end up doing damage to your body. [More]
China Shuts Down Two Fake Apple stores
By 7.25.11
Chinese officials moved to shut down two detailed fake Apple stores in Kumnmig after a blogger’s post exposing the counterfeits went viral. [More]
Counterfeit World Of Warcraft Theme Park Opens In China
By 7.22.11
The Chinese may have been the first to invent gunpowder and delicious pork-filled fried dumplings, but they have not caught up to the rest of the world when it comes to respecting intellectual property rights. Case in point, the recent opening of an entire themepark dedicated to World of Warcraft and Starcraft, two of the most popular online games in the world, in the Changzhou, Jiangsu province. It’s a sprawling $30 million megaplex spanning 600,000 square meters that aspires to compete with Disney and Universal Studios as a global theme park destination. And it’s a total knockoff. They didn’t pay Blizzard, the company behind those two games, a dime. [More]
Completely Fake Apple Stores Found In China
By 7.20.11
An American blogger living in the middle of China was amazed to stumble across a fake Apple store in her town. It was a complete counterfeit of a real Apple store, designed to look like the real thing. It had signage, and employees walking around in the iconic blue shirts with those lanyard nametags. It had the big long wooden tables with Apple products on them and the typical Apple store winding staircase. But certain details were off. [More]
The Magical Chinese Hard Drive
By 4.8.11
A customer walked into a Russian hard-drive repair center complaining about his broken 500Gb USB-drive. He had bought it dirt cheap in China but it had a problem. If you saved a movie to it, it would only play the last five minutes. They opened up the case and found inside a 128-MB flash drive working in looped mode. It displays the correct capacity when you plug it in but when you write to it and run out of space, it just overwrites the old data. Two nuts make it feel like it has the right heft. Crafty, crafty counterfeiters! Caveat emptor, if the price is “too good to be true,” it is. [More]
Thousands Of Fake Shake Weights Seized
By 1.4.11
On Monday, U.S. Customs in Savannah, Georgia intercepted a shipment of 1,783 pieces of counterfeit exercise gear imported from China. The 764 cartons included Shake Weights, Body by Jake, and Total Core. The gear sported counterfeit logos. So not only would you get the normal benefits of a fake exercise product, the fake exercise products themselves were also fake. [More]
Chase Tries To Pass Fake Money Back To Customer
By 9.23.10
A guy withdrew some hundreds from his credit union to pay his roommate his portion of the rent. The roommate deposited them at Chase, which later discovered that one of the hundreds was actually a $5 altered to look like a $100. [More]
Macy's Caught Selling Leaded Glass Rubies As Real Rubies
By 7.14.10
In 2004, a “ruby-glass composite”–basically a mixture of ruby and leaded glass–hit the jewelry market. At the time, a jewelry industry watchdog group “concluded that the stones could not be sold as rubies or precious gems under Federal Trade Commission guidelines, since they lacked the durability and value of bona fide rubies.” But Macy’s has been selling them as good old-fashioned rubies, and its salespeople have been neglecting to tell shoppers the truth at the moment they purchase the pieces, writes David V. Johnson of the SF Public Press. [More]
Tips For Spotting A Fake Coupon
By 4.2.10
The sea of coupons is fraught with peril, but CouponSherpa has some tips that will help you navigate these treacherous waters. [More]
Learn To Love Your Messed Up Toyota With This Parody
By 2.11.10
Funny or Die wants to help Toyota out of this awkward situation it’s found itself in, so the site has posted a helpful video of a cheerfully steely spokeswoman who likes to point with both hands. It’s like she’s shooting good news in your face! Pow pow! And really, it’s true that you can have an awesome garage party without ever needing to take your Toyota on the road, so maybe you should stop being so pessimistic. Video below. [More]
