Amazon Fraud – Man Charged £460,000
Online shopping has changed the landscape of commerce across the world. While the traditional high street shops die and “bedroom businesses” with few overheads prosper due to marketplaces such as Ebay, consumers are rewarded with bargains delivered directly to their door at the click of a mouse.
Yet online shopping – especially on Amazon – has its dangers. Cyber criminals often try to piggyback on the enormous amount of visitors that these websites receive daily, through phishing scams that either trick the users into giving login and payment data on fake pages or infect them with malware through bogus “voucher” offers.
Lear MoreFake goods ring that netted 70m yuan is busted
Shanghai police have arrested 25 suspects on charges of selling counterfeit goods to overseas customers through more than 200 websites. Officers confiscated more than 60 computers and servers, together with 1.75 million yuan ($282,000) in cash in an operation launched on April 1. The sums involved amount to 700 million yuan, local media reported.
French luxury brand Louis Vuitton contacted the Shanghai public security bureau after learning there were websites based in China selling fake LV handbags. Some of the counterfeit goods were sent from Shanghai.
Fake goods were offered at 10 to 20 percent of the cost of real ones on the websites meaning a fake LV handbag could be bought for 1,000 to 2,000 yuan while a real one cost 15,000 yuan.
http://www.ecns.cn/business/2015/04-23/162757.shtml
Lear MoreInvisible inks could help foil counterfeiters of all kinds
Real or counterfeit?Northwestern University scientists have invented sophisticated fluorescent inks that one day could be used as multicolored barcodes for consumers to authenticate products that are often counterfeited. Snap a photo with your smartphone, and it will tell you if the item is real and worth your money.
Counterfeiting is very big business worldwide, with $650 billion per year lost globally, according to the International Chamber of Commerce. The new fluorescent inks give manufacturers and consumers an authentication tool that would be very difficult for counterfeiters to mimic.
http://phys.org/news/2015-04-invisible-inks-foil-counterfeiters-kinds.html#jCp
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Snapdeal takes down fake shoe from site
Running an online marketplace is by no means a cakewalk, especially when there is a chance that a pair of shoes shows up as a knock-off of the original. To Hermes loafers then, otherwise priced upwards of Rs 50,000, goes the honour of being available on Snapdeal for Rs 999. However, credit to Snapdeal that the product was booted off the site when the said pair was brought to its notice.
Lear MoreFDA gets anti-counterfeiting medicine devices
The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has taken delivery of two anti-counterfeiting medicine verification devices to assist its efforts to prevent the importation of counterfeit and substandard medicines into the country.The Raman TruScan Handheld Spectrometer which can sample 5,000 medicines within an hour, rapidly investigates the components of medicines and also differentiates counterfeit medicines from the genuine ones.
The devices, valued at $160,000, would facilitate the authority’s work in the control of substandard, spurious, falsely labelled and falsified medicines (SSFFC) on the Ghanaian market.
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/regional/artikel.php?ID=355438
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New anti-fake technology to tackle counterfeit crop protection in China
BASF is leading the fight against counterfeiting in the crop protection market by investing in brand new anti-fake technology. In China the company is introducing an innovative product label that features an identification system developed by BASF and a local partner in exclusive collaboration. This technology will ensure that farmers in China can buy genuine BASF crop protection products.
“Our new technology quickly proves the authenticity of BASF products and points out with clarity products that are counterfeited. We are committed to providing farmers with effective, innovative products that allow them to work in a safe environment and produce safe food, feed and fiber,” said Tracy Wu, Director Business Management Greater China, BASF Crop Protection
http://www.agprofessional.com/news/new-anti-fake-technology-tackle-counterfeit-crop-protection-china
Lear MoreSpotted: Minnesota bar caught smuggling Wisconsin beer
As if the feud between Wisconsin and Minnesota couldn’t get any worse, a Minnesota bar was recently caught selling Wisconsin’s exclusive Spotted Cow beer.
According to a report from Minnesota’s KMSP, a Maple Grove tavern, aptly named Maple Tavern, was caught illegally selling the Wisconsin brew. Undercover police reportedly caught the tavern selling the beer in a sting operation after receiving an anonymous tip.
https://badgerherald.com/news/2015/04/21/spotted-minnesota-bar-caught-smuggling-wisconsin-beer/
Lear MoreFake Medication is a Global Problem
Fake medication – that is, those that fail to meet quality standards – is a global problem, threatening not just public health but important advancements in medicine as well.
A team of scientists reported in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene that in global studies of about 17,000 drug samples, up to 41 percent of specimens failed to meet quality standards. Among the collection is an article describing the discovery of falsified and substandard malaria drugs that caused an estimated 122,350 deaths in African children in 2013. Other studies identified poor quality antibiotics, which may harm our health and increase antimicrobial resistance – a problem that currently has developed nations like the United States utterly surrounded.
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/14221/20150421/fake-medication-is-a-global-problem.htm
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China’s beauty ecommerce industry is still full of fakes, even the ‘foreign imports only’ shops
If you’ve bought more than a couple beauty products online in China, chances are you’ve purchased some fakes. Even if you bought imported ones.
Fake products are a persistent problem across China’s ecommerce market but the beauty market may be particularly afflicted. According to a report from the 21st Century Business Herald (as cited in a recent National Business Daily article), an “absolute majority” of beauty products the company’s reporters tested were fakes. A separate test by a third party earlier this year found that 49 percent of the Mary Kay products it purchased on Chinese ecommerce sites were fake. Just recently, a CCTV report revealed that some beauty masks being sold on WeChat were fakes that contained dangerously massive amounts of glucocorticosteroids. In the online beauty industry, fakes are everywhere.
https://www.techinasia.com/chinas-beauty-ecommerce-industry-full-fakes-foreign-imports-shops/
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Why researchers say fake and low-quality drugs are a ‘global pandemic’
Fake and substandard drugs are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths around the globe each year, and the persistent lack of reliable medicines in poor countries threatens to roll back decades of efforts to combat malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and other conditions, researchers said Monday.
“The pandemic of falsified and substandard medicines is pervasive and underestimated, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where drug and regulatory systems are weak or non-existent,” Jim Herrington, a University of North Carolina public health professor who co-edited a collection of articles on the topic published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, said in a statement.
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