Thursday, April 26, 2007

Handbags sold through ebay were counterfeit (UK)

BRICKLAYER Alan Foulkes, who sold counterfeit designer handbags on ebay, the internet auction site, has been ordered to hand over £25,000.

The Recorder, Nic Parry, gave Foulkes six months to pay but he will serve two months in jail if he does not pay up.

Foulkes, 47, of Plas Uchaf, Towyn Way West, Towyn, had admitted selling an item in contravention of the Trade Marks Act, two charges of possessing goods with false trade marks, and he asked for 25 similar offences to be considered.

Mold Crown Court heard in January how he sold Louise Vuiton handbags on ebay under the seller’s name of Mabon1.

Story is Here

Monday, April 16, 2007

Worldwide eBay Fraud Scheme Involving Over 5,000 Victims

Rachel Reyes, age 29, of Williamsburg, Virginia, was sentenced today to 55 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $415,754.84 in restitution, in connection with her role in distributing fraudulent celebrity memorabilia items on eBay. Chuck Rosenberg, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; and, Cassandra M. Chandler, Special Agent in Charge, Norfolk Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation, made the announcement after Reyes’ sentencing today before United States District Judge Walter D. Kelley, Jr.

According to court documents, Rachel Reyes, her husband Jeffrey Reyes, and her mother, Nancy Selisker, operated their own eBay accounts for the sale of the counterfeit memorabilia, which included record albums and photographs of celebrities with forged signatures.

Source Article Here

Friday, April 13, 2007

Ebay: the counterfeit capital of the world

From 247WallSt
Douglas A. McIntyre
Streetinsider.com

Imagine this. Some large brand companies believe that 99% of the items sold under their names on Ebay are counterfeit. Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior are suing the online auction company to try to get fake versions of their products off Ebay's site.

According to the FT; "One designer clothing and accessories brand said it had seen the number of fakes using its brand name on Ebay rise dramatically in the past year, from 16,400 in 2005 to 20,827 in 2006."

What is not an open question is why the US government is spending its time complaining to China about pirated and counterfeit items sold in the big Asian country when it could just go over the Ebay headquarters and watch the world's best fakes being sold on any PC in the universe.

Source Post

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

FBI halts this medal's orbit on eBay

By Josh Noel
Tribune staff reporter



The eBay posting promised a one-of-a-kind, and sure enough it was: a Presidential Medal of Freedom made for James Lovell, commander of the nearly disastrous Apollo 13 space mission.

After two days of bidding in mid-January, the price was at $5,000 and still likely to soar.

"This really belongs in a museum for many to see," the seller wrote. "YOU WILL NOT FIND ANOTHER ... EVER."

The seller, a woman who frequently sells on eBay, found a taker: the FBI.

The red, white and blue decoration, highlighted by a five-pointed star and etched with the name "James Arthur Lovell Jr." on its back, is in the FBI's Chicago office, and agents are trying to solve the mystery of how it slipped away from the government.

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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

eBay under fire from the beauty industry

At the European Intellectual Property Rights Forum, held in Paris, France on March 20 and 21, anti-counterfeiting bodies called for the law to be strengthened to protect brands from the online sale of both unauthorized and counterfeit goods.

Much of the negative attention has been focused on online marketplace eBay. In the US alone, gray market and counterfeit beauty trade on eBay “has been tracked to upwards of $100m in lost revenues per year,” Joe Loomis, president of brand protection at online monitoring firm Net Enforcers tells CosmeticNews.

In Europe, Guido Baumgartner, director of global brand protection, Coty Prestige / Lancaster Group GmbH says that “[eBay] is a substantial problem for us, with not only gray market but also counterfeit and stolen goods”.

Source Article