Faking it

By Sarah Modlock

24 August 2005

We live in a world where it is possible to fake just about anything. From hair colour and assorted body parts to fun fur and festival tickets, counterfeit capability is endless. But don't let your desire for designer accessories or the latest DVDs burn a hole in your pocket.

For starters consider the phrase 'if it seems too good to be true it probably is'. No matter how much you yearn for that Balenciaga bag or the new strip for your favourite football team, if the price is low, it's unlikely to be right. And if the source is unofficial, it is highly likely that you're buying a dud.

Sales of fake DVDs, CDs and other goods are thought to net £9bn in the UK each year and cost £2bn in lost tax revenue. Authorities say gangs are increasingly attracted by the promise of high profits and a low risk of detection. Die-hard fans often fuel the demand. For instance, within weeks of the new Star Wars film, Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, being launched in the US, pirate copies, made with a camcorder in a cinema, were being sold in the UK for as little £5. The quality of bootlegs was extremely poor with some 'copies' turning out to be blank tapes. Pirate versions of the film are also available on CDs and the Internet. Overall, the trade in pirate videos is costing the audiovisual industry in excess of £100 million per year.

It's hard to imagine a muddy field filled with hatchbacks as a hotbed of crime but the Alliance Against Intellectual Property Theft estimates about a quarter of all fake goods are bought at markets and car boot sales.

The forthcoming Occasional Sales Bill aims to crack down on fake goods sold at boot sales and markets and protect consumers so they can 'enjoy their favourite markets, confident that the goods they buy are safe, legitimate and work'. Organisers would face a fine of £5,000 and up to six months imprisonment for failing to keep a formal register of sellers.

Of course you can get ripped off from the comfort of your own home. The adrenalin which kicks in when the seconds are counting down on an eBay sale is addictive. The temptation is greater still when you think you can snap up a Louis Vuitton handbag for a fifth of the store price. But a recent experiment by the Daily Mail showed that of the ten designer items they paid big money for on the internet trading site, every single bag, wallet and purse turned out to be fake despite the sellers promising they were the real deal including original packaging, tags and serial numbers. One customer the paper highlighted had paid just under £1,000 for a Vuitton bag which turned out to be fake. She took the seller to the small claims court and won her money back. But do you really want the hassle?

Reality bites

Rufus Steele who runs a Vuitton appreciation website includes information on how to spot fakes and where to avoid buying. 'Of every 100 Louis Vuitton items for sale on eBay, I would estimate that fewer than eight are genuine,' he says. His advice on buying designer goods via an auction website? Don't.

Ebay says that common sense will help you avoid fraud and that it is doing everything it can to keep the bad guys off its site. Its security relies heavily on its feedback system. All buyers and sellers can be rated and comments posted about their behaviour for everyone to see although many burned buyers prefer to suffer in silence where small amounts of money are concerned as unscrupulous sellers can reply with comments which could damage the buyer's position. Dishonest sellers can also build up a good feedback score by buying lots of items with little value. Once their rating is good enough, they will then start selling fraudulently.

The site encourages transparency and prompts buyers to contact sellers by e-mail and ask for telephone numbers. 'The dodgy guys either never get back to you or they are cagey,' says eBay's Garreth Griffith. 'If someone is trying to sell a fake good or something that doesn't exist, often they don't have a photo, or they use a stock photocopied from elsewhere, or the description is vague.'

Of course the real cost of fake goods is much greater. It's one thing to be conned but if you knowingly buy knock-off then you could be funding some extremely dark deals.

Because counterfeiting delivers big money it is the perfect 'business' for terrorists to raise and launder cash. It sounds like an urban myth but sadly it's anything but.

'Laundered profits from the sale of fakes have been traced to bank accounts funding Middle Eastern groups including Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda,' explains Ruth Orchard, director of the Anti-Counterfeit Group. The link between fake goods and terrorism is so real that Interpol issued a warning about it earlier this year. The origin of the fake is also disturbing. Don't kid yourself that cheap accessories and football boots come from happy shiny factories. The reality is more likely to involved sweat shops in Asia employing thousands of workers in terrible conditions for a few pence.

'It is not a £10 product,' says Bertrand Stalla-Bourdillon, general manager of Louis Vuitton. 'It's cash, it's money laundering, it's organised crime, it's child labour, it's linked to terrorism and to drugs.'

Of course, it's not just fashion which falls victim to faux. A fake version of just about anything your hard-earned cash can buy including CDs, chewing gum, washing powder, perfume, whisky and mobile phones is being smuggled into the UK. But buying one of the UK's most popular counterfeit items could cause the biggest let-down. Our favourite fake import is Viagra.