Imitation Nation

Tom’s hardware review ran an article this week  about a chinese pc repair shop that received four of these, and upon closer examination, three of them were fake and unrepairable and unusable. They had modified older cards and in some cases attached other parts to give the appearance of the 4090 unit but the fake one was still inoperable which you would have discovered the moment you plugged it in....

PSM did a video story on the Heal The World civil suit from Gilead Sciences, accusing the pharmacy in NYC of trafficking in counterfeit HIV medicine. We discuss the  massive four-continent bust that Europol coordinated of dark web sellers  of counterfeit controlled substances as part of Operation RapTor. We also discuss  CBP’s enormous seizure of counterfeit Apple chargers . We think it must have...

PSM released a report this week on fishy freight shipments of medicine into the country, using data we pulled from the FDA’s medical freight shipments database. We are finding two kinds of fraud here. First, we’re seeing shipping manifests where the manufacturer listed on the report is not an FDA-registered entity, which means it’s been made in a facility never inspected by the FDA. Which means it...

The  end of de minimis started on Friday May 2nd . That affects 1.36bn packages that enter the country every year. This change will affect both consumers that buy cheap products from China but also businesses in the U.S. that source their products or parts from China. We’re expecting a rise in the technique of  trans-shipping  to evade the end of Chinese de minimis packages.   The US Trade Represe...

AI being used to do fraud at scale, including a report from  Europol , and a report from  Food and Beverage Magazine . Also, AI is being used to generate patent applications , which is probably going to bury a lesser-staffed USPTO.   Shabbir talked about the  Amazon Brand Protection Report , which makes him want legislation to ensure all marketplaces work hard to avoid counterfeit products. Shein’...

In this episode, Shabbir and Sven talk about… Counterfeit forever stamps. Shabbir bought stamps that are too cheap to be true and is sending three letters to Sven, two with fake stamps and one with a real one, to see if they arrive. Remember, the US Postal Inspectors would like you to report fake stamps here:  https://www.uspis.gov/report Counterfeit airbags. We discuss Michigan’s one-of-a-kind au...

Go now and donate to support Sven's Police Unity Tour 400 mile ride.     A pharmacy ordered Ozempic from a distributor out of Florida and dispensed it to a patient . It was one of those dial a dose pens and the dial didn’t match their prescription. They brought it back to the pharmacy, who correctly quarantined it and called the Board of Pharmacy.  And this is the best part: The BOP investigator c...

Sven and Shabbir discuss three big stories of the wee: Reuters story on the Brazilian coffee industry’s concerns with products that have Brazil in the name of the product, but don’t contain Brazilian sourced coffee beans.  A case, investigated by Homeland Security Investigation, and prosecuted by The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Illinois in East St. Louis IL of a woman who p...

Since clothing is not a regulated product like medicine, people who want to make cheap knock offs have a lot more ability to infringe on the original design by making a few changes. What we haven’t talked about is the fact that the US has a policy of not allowing clothing made with cotton that used slave labor, which is a problem in the Chinese textile industry. Listen to learn more about how coun...

This week on Imitation Nation, Shabbir and Sven will tackle the case of "DrXanax" a Canadian national who was just sentenced to 30 years in the U.S. They also cover the indictment of a New York aesthetician who allegedly posed as a medical professional while injecting clients with counterfeit Botox. Lastly they describe a Port of Long Beach smuggling operation that sounds like the script of a Quen...

Sven and Shabbir discuss the biggest stories in counterfeits for the last two weeks. Walmart.com "Birkin Bag" controversy Yahoo! News Columbia Journal for Law and the Arts The U.S. Trade Representative's Notorious Markets Report See the press release and the full report . Xiaofei "Sophie" Chen arrest and prosecution PSM copy of the criminal complaint Sven and Shabbir make their predictions for big...

This week, Shabbir Safdar and Sven Bergmann cover the arrest of a Houston, Texas woman accused of posing as a medical professional and injecting fake lip fillers, a woman in Medina, Tennessee busted selling research-only compounds as weight loss injections, and an update on the lawsuit filed by grieving families against Snapchat. Listen now.

This week, Shabbir Safdar and Sven Bergmann cover an $18 million dollar counterfeit Gibson guitar seizure in Long Beach, the resolution of a longstanding counterfeit HIV drug case, counterfeit bourbon, and a live  DSCSA demo that happened at the American Society for Pharmacy Law conference. Listen now.