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.

StockX ha...

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 h...

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’s illegal to enter the country.

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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 Representative released the 2025 “Special 301 ...

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 wo...

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...

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 came over, pulled out his phone and t...

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 plead guilty to selling count...

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 counterfeiters exploit import loopholes...

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 Quentin Tarantino movie.

Show notes:

Ar...

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 de...