Amazon recalls six million fake products worldwide in 2022, double the number of the previous year

Amazon's battle against counterfeits resulted in the identification, seizure and recall of six million fake products worldwide last year, double the number in 2021. The e-commerce giant invested $1.2 billion (about $1.1 billion euros), 30% more than the previous year, to deal with a problem that is closely linked to the increasing opening of its platform to third-party sellers (they account for 58% of the products sold) and that led the company to create in 2020 his own research unit.

In the third edition of its

, Amazon details that its anti-fraud team is already made up of 15,000 employees (from

developers , to data scientists and researchers).

The company admits that, despite the advances, "counterfeits continue to be a problem in the distribution industry worldwide", and on all platforms, and that more investment is needed, both public and private, to combat them.

But he believes his efforts to crack down on counterfeits are paying off: Amazon detected 800,000 attempts to create an account to sell counterfeit products last year, up from 2.5 million in 2021.

“Our strict seller verification controls and strategy of holding violators accountable through legal action are discouraging criminals,” Dharmesh Mehta, vice president of Seller Services at Amazon, explains in an email.

One of the measures that he uses to reinforce security is to hold a video chat with the person responsible for the account that is requested to be opened in order to verify her identity.

In 2022, the company sued or alerted police to more than 1,300 violations in the US, UK, EU and China, up from 600 a year earlier.

The proliferation of counterfeits in electronic commerce not only creates distrust on the part of buyers when using a certain platform, but also exposes technology companies to assume part of the responsibility for possible crimes committed on their websites.

In a ruling published in December, the Court of Justice of the EU did not rule out that Amazon may be responsible for the sale of counterfeit products by third parties on its platform and left two complaints filed by the French brand Louboutin in Belgium in the hands of national courts. and Luxembourg against Amazon for selling products identical to its famous red-soled shoes.

Photo released by Amazon on November 9, 2022, of counterfeit products seized by police in China.

The technology company defends itself by saying that it is an intermediary and that it is taking measures against counterfeiting.

Amazon's Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU), which includes former prosecutors, FBI agents, investigators and data analysts, collaborated in 2022 with companies including Cartier, World Wrestling Entertainment (for counterfeit belts wrestling championship), FELCO (high precision pruning shears), General Electric and King Technology, among others.

The number of complaints that brands file with the company has dropped 35% in 2022, according to the report.

To detect counterfeits, Mehta explains that the computer tools “identify things like an incorrect pattern or logo, based on information that brands share” with the company.

“Our systems analyze more than 8 billion daily attempted changes to product detail pages to proactively prevent incorrect or violating listings from going live before a customer sees them,” he adds.

One of the most prominent operations took place at the end of 2022. Chinese police dismantled three counterfeit product networks in various operations in which Amazon provided information.

So 24,000 fraudulent items, including luxury goods, sportswear and car accessories, were seized in Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces.

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