Amazon Launches New Counterfeit Crimes Unit

E-commerce giant Amazon is not sitting on its thumbs while fraudsters get away with crime on its platform. Especially with the Trump Administration coming down on the company for the sale of knock-off goods on its site.

The company has taken the initiative of launching a new ‘Counterfeit Crimes Unit’ that will work with law enforcement to take on these fraudsters.

The unit was launched in efforts to pursue criminal action against counterfeiters. It is made up of former federal prosecutors, data analysts and investigators.

The Counterfeit Crimes Unit will mine the site and collect information from external resources, such as payment service providers, to locate “bad actors” who attempt to sell knock-off products, Amazon said.

“Every counterfeiter is on notice that they will be held accountable to the maximum extent possible under the law, regardless of where they attempt to sell their counterfeits or where they’re located,” Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of customer trust and partner support, said in a statement.

“We are working hard to disrupt and dismantle these criminal networks, and we applaud the law enforcement authorities who are already part of this fight.”

Amazon has millions of third-party sellers with many selling counterfeit, unsafe, and even expired goods. It was in April that the Trump administration added five of Amazon’s foreign websites to a list of “notorious markets” that facilitate the sale of counterfeit goods. Amazon’s websites in Canada, France, Germany, India and the U.K. were put on the list.

Last year Amazon had introduced the Project Zero program to give brands more tools to eliminate counterfeits themselves. It also operates a service called Transparency, which seeks to detect and prevent sales of counterfeit goods.

The e-commerce company said this week that it invested more than $500 million in 2019 on counterfeit prevention and blocked over 2.5 million “suspected bad actor accounts” and over 6 billion “suspected bad listings.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and have not been compensated for this article.