Sleight of handbags
REVEALED: The clever scam that con artists use to get a pricey designer bag AND its full refund price in one fraudulent trick
FAKE designer handbags are now so realistic that even shops selling the real thing are being taken in by swindlers operating a clever double sting.
These highly sophisticated con artists buy a real designer bag from a reputable online site, receiving a receipt with the goods.
They then substitute the authentic item with a counterfeit that’s almost impossible to identify as fake, and return the imitation to the store with the receipt, saying that the handbag is not suitable, and requesting a refund.
The retailer is left with a fake handbag and a loss of hundreds, if not thousands, of euro on the handbag, while the scammer gains not just an authentic designer bag but also its purchase price in the form of the refund.
Designer handbag reseller Patrick Coughlan, who owns the Dublin designer handbag store, The Designer Exchange, says this is just one of a number of illegal scams currently undermining the designer goods business. Demand for designer goods has flourished with the rising economy and consumers are once again happy to part with thousands for that ‘musthave’ bag, statement belt or pair of trainers.
But as the lucrative luxury market has soared, so too has its counterfeit counterpart.
‘To the naked eye it can be very hard to tell a fake from the real thing,’ says Mr Coughlan.
He says larger retailers can be targeted by malicious con artists who capitalise on the quality of today’s fake goods market.
‘They sell something online and the customer gets a receipt. They then go back to the store with the fake they have picked up and then they get a refund, so they get the real item and the refund. I have heard of a big department store who unwittingly sold out the fake product again.
‘That leads back to the need for everyone to independently authenticate the goods they sell,’ he says. ‘To us so, the receipt is not the be all and end all, it still has to go through that forensic process.’
Mr Coughlan’s business is the goto store for second hand designer goods in Ireland and as such, he has been targeted so many times that he has invested in machinery to help him distinguish the real from the fake.
He has also trained a team of three staff to authenticate goods that are brought to his store.
To make matters worse for his business, online popups have started directing people to sellers that specialise in ‘premium fakes’ for a fraction of the price authentic goods.
These sites have recently surged in popularity with people happily sharing pictures of their ‘designer goods’ arriving safely in the post, often from China.
‘To the untrained eye there are definitely great replicas,’ Mr Coughlan told the Irish Mail on Sunday. But as a reseller of designer handbags, he has to know they are authentic.
He said: ‘For our reputation we have to know what to look for and the things that stand out.’
Mr Coughlan’s store has a rigorous authentication process before it buys or sells a product.
‘We have bought new machines, that are almost like dentist lights on a swivel with a magnifier for checking the stitching, checking colour of stitching, checking if the brand actually make that bag in that colour or that size in that particular year, he said.
‘There are obvious things that you look for like the symmetry of stitching, the quality, the hot stamping, the date stamping, the serial codes, right down to particular brands like Fendi that will use sterling silver in their hardware. There is a whole testing process involved.’
Mr Coughlan says while he has had to invest in machinery and more staff he says that it is a savvy investment to his own business.
‘There is no way I am going to invest money in paying staff to authenticate and then actually buy the product in if I can’t stand over my goods. ‘It’s a very delicate end of the industry and it is why we offer certificates of authenticity with every piece that comes into us.’ Not all attempts to sell fakes are malicious. For a reseller like Mr Coughlan, breaking the bad news that a handbag is not authentic has to be delicately handled.
‘We have had people bring in bags that we couldn’t authenticate,’ he said.
‘You will find that some people may have been given a gift. We have had to have difficult conversations with people and say “the item hasn’t passed through our checklist”. We don’t want to offend someone to the point of saying: “take that rubbish away from me, it’s a fake”. That’s not how we operate,’ he said.
‘We have had people coming in and maybe the husband was on a golfing holiday in Portugal, and saw this bag that was quite obviously a Louis Vuitton fake. The husband might not know the industry and he brings it home. The wife has never owned a designer bag before and she assumes she now owns a real Louis Vuitton.’
Mr Coughlan is furious that the counterfeit market is able to thrive, with fakes sold openly on the streets and at markets, especially around Christmas time.
‘These guys are getting away with having council permits to sell these items that are clearly fake Burberry and fake Michael Kors,’ he said.
‘To the naked eye, it’s hard to tell a fake’ ‘She assumes she owns a real Louis Vuitton’