The Most Counterfeited Products

Counterfeiters produce knock-offs of everything from Viagra to Nike shoes. Here are some of the items that counterfeiters just love to copy.

Author:: Matt Brownell
Publish date:: Feb 14, 2012 6:00 AM EST

Counterfeiting is usually associated with guys in trench coats selling fake Rolexes or Louis Vuitton handbags on New York street corners. And while luxury watches are indeed a popular item among counterfeiters, the practice hardly ends there. To find out how deep the knock-off rabbit hole goes, we spoke to Bill Patterson of OpSec Security, which provides global anti-counterfeiting solutions to brands in various sectors. As he explained, it’s not just brands that need to worry about counterfeiting. It’s also consumers, who not only overpay for cheap knockoffs but can also be physically harmed by cheap imitations of pharmaceuticals and perfume. And while some counterfeit items are easy to spot, others can look amazingly close to the real thing, at least to the untrained eye. “Counterfeit goods run the same gamut of quality levels that you’ll find among retail items that you find in stores,” he explains. “You will find some counterfeiters that just slap a coach label on a bag, but you’d say, ‘there’s no way that’s real.’ There are others that can be more challenging.” Here are 8 of the products that get counterfeited most frequently, according OpSec. Photo Credit: priceminister

Yes, Rolexes (and luxury watches in general) remain among the most popular counterfeit items, and to the untrained eye it’s very difficult to spot a fake. “Can you tell the difference? Yeah, when it stops working,” Patterson says. While most people are smart enough not to buy a Rolex off the street (or at least, not to pay anywhere near full price), there’s another hidden danger in the luxury watch market: counterfeit parts. There's a real risk, Patterson says, that you’ll take your real watch to a watchmaker who’s decided to cut costs by purchasing knock-off parts that haven’t been finely calibrated to fit your exact watch. To avoid this, Patterson advises consumers go to an authorized retailer for any repairs if you already own a Rolex or other luxury timepiece. Photo Credit: sonictk

Speaking of things you can buy on the street in New York City, how about counterfeit discs? Once a movie is released on DVD, it isn’t long before it’s uploaded to a file-sharing website to be pirated and watched on a computer. But it’s a little harder to find pirated movies while they’re still in theaters, and that’s where the sidewalk counterfeiters come in. While these home movies are sometimes produced using the old-school tactic of sneaking a video camera into a theater, Patterson says he increasingly sees higher-quality discs that are made by pirates who get their hands on a review copy for the disc that was intended to be screened by voters for the Academy Awards or other awards programs. “Supposedly they’re digitally watermarked, but it doesn’t stop them from getting copies out there,” explains Patterson. Photo Credit: Paul Keller

The phenomenon of counterfeit tablets drives home one of the key points of spotting a fake: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Patterson's firm OpSec notes that there has been a big rise in knock-off tablets recently, with Android devices being a particular target. The company points to business-to-business e-commerce sites like Alibaba and TradeKey, which it says counterfeiters use to sell tablets in bulk at ridiculously discounted prices – for instance, Motorola Xoom tablets for less than $100 per unit (they usually sell for around $400). Treat any super-cheap tablet on an auction or business-to-business website with a high degree of suspicion, and check for a manufacturer’s warranty, which the fakes tend to not have. Photo Credit: Amazon.com

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Knock-Offs

Counterfeiting is usually associated with guys in trench coats selling fake Rolexes or Louis Vuitton handbags on New York street corners. And while luxury watches are indeed a popular item among counterfeiters, the practice hardly ends there. To find out how deep the knock-off rabbit hole goes, we spoke to Bill Patterson of OpSec Security, which provides global anti-counterfeiting solutions to brands in various sectors. As he explained, it’s not just brands that need to worry about counterfeiting. It’s also consumers, who not only overpay for cheap knockoffs but can also be physically harmed by cheap imitations of pharmaceuticals and perfume. And while some counterfeit items are easy to spot, others can look amazingly close to the real thing, at least to the untrained eye. “Counterfeit goods run the same gamut of quality levels that you’ll find among retail items that you find in stores,” he explains. “You will find some counterfeiters that just slap a coach label on a bag, but you’d say, ‘there’s no way that’s real.’ There are others that can be more challenging.” Here are 8 of the products that get counterfeited most frequently, according OpSec. Photo Credit: priceminister