Facebook ‘failing to stop’ sales of fake goods

TRADING Standards has criticised Facebook over its failure to stop counterfeit designer goods being openly sold on its Marketplace site.

An undercover investigation by BBC South East discovered that even after its team had received fake goods ordered off the forum and reported it to Facebook, the sellers were still continuing to operate. Mike Andrews, the lead coordinator of the National Trading Standards ecrime Team, said that the social media giant needed to do more to tackle the problem.

“It’s quite easy to go on there now and buy any sort of counterfeit product you would like, and when we’ve approached Facebook to try to get this content removed they simply don’t act quickly enough, if at all, in many cases,” he told the BBC. One counterfeit trader told the reporters that he “could get away with it for about six months” before Facebook closed him down, and “then you start again”.

The investigation found sellers in Sussex and Kent trading fake brands such as Gucci and Hugo Boss from the front rooms of their homes and from vans in pub car parks. Facebook said it has launched an investigation.