Amazon China Unit Closes Vendor After Report of Fake Cosmetics
The China unit of Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN:US), the world’s largest e-commerce company, closed a third-party online store after state media reported that fake cosmetics were being sold. The shutdown was in response to customer complaints and the company will immediately close any stores selling fakes, Amazon’s China unit said in a posting on its verified microblog yesterday. China Central Television said on March 19 the company was among operators with counterfeit or questionable products for sale. Amazon and rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. have adopted tougher management of fake products on their websites in China as the government pledges to crack down on breaches of intellectual property rights. The world’s most populous nation accounts for more than half of international trade in counterfeit goods, according to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates. Authorities arrested 59,000 people and seized more than 9,000 tons of fake and shoddy products last year in cases worth 172.9 billion yuan, a Ministry of Public Security official said Jan. 21. China is host to a number of markets known for “prominent and extensive availability of counterfeit merchandise,” the U.S. Trade Representative said in a February report. It cited Beijing’s Silk Market as an example.
Lear MoreSmuggled Cigarettes In Mexico
We’ve reported extensively on the fierce jostling for supremacy in Belize’s export cigarette market. It is a huge multi-million dollar enterprise, selling – or smuggling – cigarettes from Asia, mostly China, out of the Free Zone sin the North and West and getting them into Mexico. Well tonight Mexico is reporting a major bust with contraband cigarettes from Belize. A Mexican newspaper reports that on 14 March, authorities seized more than 14 million contraband cigarettes, the largest seizure on over a year. They intercepted the cigarettes in a trailer containing 402 thousand cartons of cigarettes. The brands are Bronco, D & J, Royal, Gold Seal Supreme manufactured in Vietnam, India, Paraguay, China and Canada. The vehicle operator, 42 year old Juan Ramirez Sanchez, submitted false invoices for air conditioners – but only cigarettes were inside. News reports say they were smuggled into Mexico through the border with Belize.
Lear MoreFake phone accessories of popular brand seized
Coimbatore: Video Piracy Cell has seized fake phone accessories and products, being stored and sold under a popular brand, worth Rs 43 lakh from some shops in the city and arrested four persons in this connection. he Cell along with Enforcers of Intellectual Property Rights carried out raids in the in Gandhipuram on March 15, and seized large number of fake panels, adapters, battery, flip covers and pouches that were being sold under the brand name of Samsung, an official release said here today. Owners of the shops were arrested and cases under various section registered against them, it said.
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Five Sandwell men arrested in £120m tobacco smuggling investigation
Five men from Sandwell have been arrested as part of an investigation into a suspected £120m tobacco smuggling fraud.
Early morning raids were carried out at properties in Smethwick, West Bromwich and Great Barr yesterday, following recent seizures of 16 million cigarettes and £600,000 in cash. Two men aged 39 and 41 from Smethwick, two men aged 39 and 37, from Great Barr and a 39-year-old man from West Bromwich were all arrested. 130 investigators from HM Revenue and Customs, along with officers from West Midlands Police, searched ten residential and three commercial properties as part of Operation Dardanelle, which targets the organised smuggling of cigarettes and tobacco.
Lear MoreSpotting Fakes
From drugs to gadgets, the share of counterfeits in global trade, according to an OECD estimate, stands at 7-10%. The implications worsen with currency counterfeiting. However, fighting fakes has never been easy; the technology behind the spurious has often caught up with, and sometimes even outpaced, that of the authentic. But with non-cloneable identification (nCID), the trend may yet reverse. A Pune-based company, Bilcare, has developed nano-microparticles-enabled authentication that could nail even the best fakes—minuscule amounts of such particles of metal are embedded on an nCID chip on the packaging of a product. Under a magneto-optic sensor, the nCID chip generates a non-reproducible, digitised image unique to the packed unit—‘non-reproducible’ meaning that even the manufacturer of the chip can’t make a copy. The image can then be transmitted through mobile or internet gateways, and the manufacturing site, date and other particulars of the packed unit can be verified. Thus, even the closest lookalike would fail the magneto-optic test.
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/spotting-fakes/1233281?rhheader
Police arrests three from petro-product smuggling gang
Police on Thursday claimed to have busted a petroleum-product smuggling gang, operating from the Mathura refinery by arresting three of its members. “While three member of the gang have been arrested, fourth one, Fateh Chandra managed to dodge the police. Five hundred and twenty-five litres of petrol and diesel have been seized from them along with containers,” Ajai Pal Sharma, police circle officer, said. Arrested members of the gang Charan Singh Yadav, Upendra Chauhan, and Balram have confessed that they were purchasing petroleum-products at throw-away rates from tanker-owners and then selling it in the open market at higher prices, police said.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/police-arrests-three-from-petroproduct-smuggling-gang/457721-3-242.html
Lear MoreCounterfeit health and beauty products arrests on Long Island
Authorities say they have taken down a major counterfeiting operation in five locations across Nassau County. Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said $2 million worth of fake health and beauty products were seized Thursday. The products are facsimiles of major international brands owned by Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble and Unilever.
Two brothers from Franklin Square and Plainview, Pardeep Malik and Hamant Mullick, are accused of running the sophisticated operation in facilities in Franklin Square, Oceanside, Freeport and a showroom in Valley Stream. Prosecutors say they sold the products to distributors who sold to smaller independent stores. Investigators are running lab tests to ascertain whether any of the counterfeit goods have any health risks. The operation came to light after a fire in April. When fire officials went back to investigate, they discovered the alleged ring. The fake products include Vicks Vaporub, baby oil, Vaseline, Chapstick and inhalers. “These products have been found to turn up in retail locations in New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida,” said Rice.
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local/long_island&id=9458184
Lear MoreIndia: Is your medicine a fake? Government report warns counterfeit drugs are flooding India
There is a high chance that the medicines prescribed routinely may not be helping people as they are just duds. Drugs as common as paracetamol and certain antibiotics, readily available at chemist shops, may be fake and not of standard quality, a government report has warned.
In January 2014, at least 32 medicines sold in hospitals and chemist shops across India, including the national Capital, have failed government tests and have been declared ‘not of standard quality’ by the Health Ministry’s Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO).
The ministry has recently put several medicines that are commonly sold in the market on high alert. Paracetamol tablet IP 500 mg, which is a widely used over-the-counter pain reliever and antipyretic (used to control fever), is one of them. The drug commonly used for headaches and other minor pains, which is manufactured by a Chennai-based company, has failed the government test. Similarly, Needin SR 20, which is used to control blood pressure, and RONFLOX, an antibiotic manufactured by a company in Himachal Pradesh, have been found lacking.
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Egyptian startup Asly fights counterfeit vaccines to save lives and money
When Tamer Ahmed was a child, his three year-old sister died because she had been given a counterfeit vaccine. Years later, still reeling from the loss, he and his partners Mohamed Hal and Mohamed Al Mughni, launched Asly from Egypt in an attempt to ameliorate this region-wide problem. The startup Asly wants to “offer a radical solution to the problem of fake products, and make the MENA region the [safest] shopping place in the world.” This goal, without any doubt, is very ambitious, especially given the statistics. Ahmed tells me that around 50% of pharmaceuticals in the Arab world are fake; 40% in Saudi Arabia, more than 50% in Egypt, and between 20 and 25% in the UAE. These frauds not only lead to needless deaths, especially in the case of fake malaria pharmaceuticals, but they also cause financial losses for pharmaceutical companies
http://www.wamda.com/2014/03/could-a-mobile-service-offer-a-solution-to-counterfeit
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Counterfeit mobiles ‘cost $6 billion a year’
Black market sales of counterfeit and substandard mobile phones are a US$6 billion a year problem, says a new report into the global counterfeit phone market. Research from the Mobile Manufacturers Forum (MMF) says around 148 million counterfeit or substandard mobile phones were sold worldwide in 2013, mostly in developing countries. “They were sold through visible retail sites, unofficial retail outlets, online auction websites and in local black markets,” said MMF secretary general Michael Milligan. “With the average knock-off phone selling for around US$45, our conservative estimate of US$6 billion in illegal sales represents a massive financial loss for governments and the mobile phone industry. “Governments can combat the growing counterfeit phone problem with new technology which can identify substandard devices on the mobile network and permanently block users who don’t change to a genuine product.”
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