Buyer beware: why snapping up a bargain

THE sale and purchase of counterfeit goods is costing Northern Ireland hundreds of millions of pounds every year.

The main culprits are organised crime gangs, and paramilitaries, but there has been a rise in what is known as the “bedroom counterfeiter”, people who are selling all types of fake luxury items from their home.

A report four years ago by PricewaterhouseCoopers showed that outside of London, Northern Ireland was the UK counterfeit capital.

And with the rise of social media and buy-and-sell sites on Facebook, the problem is growing. Worldwide the crime costs an estimated 50bn dollars each year and across the UK it’s around £10bn.

Two years ago, Trading Standards were able to identity 66 counterfeit sellers on just one Facebook buy-and-sell site here within 30 minutes.

And as the problem increases, so too does the way in which the products are produced — making it harder for the customer to tell the difference.

The products come from many different places, but mostly Eastern Europe and the Far East.

Certain goods have become more popular on the market, for example fake big brand makeup and phone chargers. However, with products like cosmetics, they are often being made in unsanitary conditions and horrific things like arsenic, rat droppings and urine, and sawdust, can find their way into the goods.

Damien Doherty, chief inspector at Northern Ireland Trading Standards Service, meets quarterly with partner agencies to assess the scale of the problem.

He says there has been a distinct change in how and who is perpetrating the crime in Northern Ireland.

“Predominantly it was organised crime gangs in the past, who are still very much involved and they are certainly the main players.

“But we have seen a massive upsurge, particularly in the last ten years, from what we term ‘bedroom counterfeiters’.

“It could be a married couple, both in work, who have decided to sell (fake) Disney DVDs, makeup and any number of luxury goods items and essentially it’s a side-line.

“The figures from what people are making with selling counterfeit goods can run into the hundreds of thousands each year.

“People are making big money, they are seeing it as a side-line and very easy to basically sell the goods that they have on offer through buy-and-sell sites, particularly on social media,” says Mr Doherty.

“Some run their business like any normal business — they give you a delivery time as to when they are going to come out and deliver your counterfeit goods.

“Particularly coming up to Christmas you are likely to see people buying sportswear, handbags, designer sunglasses, electrical products and certainly cosmetics and alcohol online.

“Sometimes it appears in bars, pubs clubs and off-licences as well,” the officer adds.

Trading Standards say they have a steady stream of prosecutions and take about five counterfeit cases a year.

“We did a very recent seizure of counterfeit phone products; Apple and Samsung phone chargers, phone covers and accessories.

“We seized hundreds of items from various outlets throughout Northern Ireland.”

The trade in fake cosmetics has taken off in the last five years with big sought-after brands like MAC, Urban Decay and Chanel all among those being routinely counterfeited.

Trading Standards said that in a lot of cases, beauty salons and parlours, who end up selling the products, have bought them unwittingly.

Mr Doherty explains: “A lot of time and investment is put into the aesthetics of counterfeit products to make the packaging seem legit.

“So on first look, and to someone who is not an expert, usually, because they buy them direct from China, they think they are buying a genuine product from the manufacturer. They are paying close to the real price for the product so they think they are shopping around, getting a bargain, but the price isn’t so sufficiently low that it sets alarm bells ringing.

“Many people we seize products from have unwittingly purchased counterfeit goods and are horrified to find out that they’ve been selling them to the public.

“When we get these products tested and analysed they can contain lead, mercury, arsenic, cyanide and particularly in the make-up products that’s what we are finding. The big concern for us is that people are applying these products to their skin.”

One of the big problems with the rise of the online market is that it makes it trickier to follow the trail of those involved.

Mr Doherty adds: “When I started Trading Standards,