온라인 위조 상품에 대한 아마존의 지속적인 전쟁

### 현재 진행 중인 위조품과의 전쟁: 아마존과 크라이 프리시전의 진품을 위한 싸움
* 🏭 브루클린의 한 창고에서 작업자들이 **멀티캠이라는 특허를 받은 위장**을 사용하여 군복을 제작하고 있으며, 이 제품은 현재 **온라인, 특히 아마존에서 널리 판매**되고 있습니다.
* ⚖ 지난 3월, 크라이는 **위조품의 만연으로 인해 매년 수백만 달러의 손실**이 입는다는 점을 강조하며 아마존을 상대로 **위조품 판매업체를 상대로 소송**을 제기했습니다.
* 🛡 2020년에 출범한 아마존의 위조품 범죄 전담팀(CCU)은 **21,000명 이상의 위조범을 추적**하고 **700만 개의 위조품을 압수**했으며, 사기와의 전쟁에 **12억 달러를 지출**했습니다.
* 📈 이러한 노력에도 불구하고 소매 전문가들은 **제품이 진품이든 위조품이든 모든 거래에서 플랫폼이 이익**을 얻는다는 점에서 아마존의 조치가 충분하지 않다고 주장합니다.
* 🔍 이커머스의 성장으로 인해 위조품이 만연해 **버켄스탁이나 나이키 같은 브랜드가 아마존에서 퇴출**되는 등 위조품 판매업자들이 더 쉽게 번창할 수 있게 되었습니다.
* 💔 위조 제품은 안전에 위험을 초래할 수 있으며, **영국에서 치명적인 감전사로 이어진 위조 Apple 충전기**와 관련된 주목할 만한 사례도 있습니다.
* 🛠 아마존은 셀러가 위조품을 신고할 수 있도록 **브랜드 레지스트리 및 프로젝트 제로**와 같은 도구를 구현했지만, 리스팅의 양이 너무 많아서 식별 프로세스가 복잡해졌습니다.
* 🌐 새로운 연방 법안인 Inform Act는 대량 판매자의 투명성을 개선하는 것을 목표로 하지만, **위조품과의 전쟁은 여전히 아마존과 브랜드 모두에게 어려운 과제**입니다.

위조품은 안전과 진품성을 위협하기 때문에 아마존과 크라이는 사기 제품에 적극적으로 대처하고 있습니다.

In a light-filled warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, hundreds of workers are meticulously handcrafting police and military garments, cutting, stitching, and shaping shirts, backpacks, and body armor with Crye precision, a patented camouflage called multicam, then packing it into thousands of boxes ready to be sold, often on online marketplaces like Amazon. Amazon.com has perhaps tens of thousands, if not more, products that are available in authentic multicam and is presently being used by perhaps several dozen armed forces all around the globe. But in March, Crye filed a joint lawsuit with Amazon against counterfeiters. It's a problem, Crye says. Costs it millions of dollars annually, and that happens with alarming regularity. At what point of your job are you dealing with counterfeits? Um, unfortunately, it's almost every day. In 2020, Amazon launched a counterfeit crimes unit to

team up with brands and law enforcement on investigations like this. We're not going to stop until there are no counterfeits in the Amazon store. That is our mission. Amazon also has online tools like Brand Registry and Project Zero that give sellers some power to report and remove counterfeits. But retail experts say it's not enough. So even if that product is counterfeit or stolen, they make money every time there's a transaction on their website, so they're not really incentivized to pull this stuff down quickly. CNBC went to Virginia for an inside look at Amazon's counterfeit crimes unit, and asked the division head and Crye precision what it would really take to stop counterfeiters in their tracks. Counterfeits are a decades-old problem for all online marketplaces, including Amazon, which launched its third-party site in 2000. The explosion of digital commerce has dramatically

increased the amount of products that are offered to consumers for purchase, which therefore means there's quite a few more counterfeit products available for purchase. By 2016, sellers told CNBC. The problem was growing after Amazon's effort to openly court Chinese manufacturers. Sales from Chinese-based sellers on the site more than doubled in 2015. Absolutely. It got exponentially worse. There's zero doubt about that. I mean, that opened the floodgates. In the next few years, big brands like Birkenstock and Nike quit selling directly on Amazon, pointing to counterfeits and the Wild West nature of the marketplace. Then came the pandemic-fueled online shopping frenzy in the stock market. Amazon was doing better than ever, but more shoppers meant more incentive for bad actors, too. The pandemic obviously put the problem on steroids a bit because suddenly everybody was home.

A lot of folks were shopping from home. People were chasing goods that were elusive in some respects. So in June 2020, Amazon launched its Counterfeit Crimes Unit, or CCU, as a small team of 10 to 12 data analysts, investigators, and former federal prosecutors like CCU head Kebharu Smith. It was called upon from the highest levels of the company at the time, Jeff Bezos. In over four years, we pursued over 21,000 counterfeit bad actors through either civil suits or criminal referrals. Now, Smith's CCU team has about 35 people. We're all over the globe from Seattle to Milan, London team members in China in 2023. Amazon says it partnered with law enforcement around the world to seize 7 million counterfeit products and execute more than 50 raids, spending $1.2 billion and employing 15,000 people to make it happen.

In China, for example, last year alone, we had over 50 investigations that resulted in the detention and arrest of over 100 counterfeit bad actors. We also partnered with the City of London police in a raid action, where one of our team members was involved and embedded with the City of London police related to counterfeit toothbrush heads. Amazon also sues counterfeiters alongside brands like Yeti, Game Company, Dutch Blitz, and Crye. Shade is completely off from our standard that we are very strict about. So this pattern is on tens of thousands of soldiers. While counterfeits have always been a big problem for high-end brands, the rise of e-commerce has made smaller brands like Crye a target too. This was a counterfeit brand called LK tactical. They have an Amazon presence. Unfortunately, they were trying to bid on military contracts as well.

Genuine multicam. Black has a lot of black areas in it to conceal in dark environments, as you can kind of see right here on this small panel of it, but their pattern does not. It's actually got a lot more lighter areas in there, so it's going to be pretty ineffective for the wearer. Unlike counterfeits sold on street corners, online shoppers have less opportunity to verify authenticity before a purchase. Although there are some ways to check for red flags. Looking to see if how long the seller has been in business, how long they've been selling on a particular platform, do they have a lot of customer reviews? Things like that. Although, to complicate matters, illegitimate sellers sometimes buy a slew of fake positive reviews to appear legitimate, even for brands themselves. Like Crye, it can be hard to distinguish between a counterfeit online listing and one from its thousands.

of legitimate resellers. The colors are pretty close to our actual standards, so the brown is fairly close to the brown, the olive is very close to the olive. And they're using the exact same shapes as well. So that, you know, kind of throws us off. If all we have to go off of is just an image on the internet. When we see a shirt and pant set on Amazon in multicam for $40, we know almost for sure that that can't possibly be authentic multicam, because it would just simply be impossible to produce a garment in real multicam fabrics at those price points. Low-cost counterfeits hurt sales and put a brand's and Amazon's reputation at risk. Early on, Jeff Bezos understood the importance of consumer trust. And so, you know, I do think they've had an earnest disincentive for there to be counterfeit products on the platform from day one.

But as counterfeits find their way into more and more categories online, they can cause true harm to customers too. Counterfeiters don't care if the product is safe. Now, a seller consultant, Rachel Greer, worked in Amazon's fraud and product safety departments from roughly 2007 to 2015. Around 2013, Greer recalls a case involving a knockoff Apple charger. There was a person who was electrocuted and ended up dying in the UK from a counterfeit charger. It was counterfeit. Had none of the protections in place like it just looked good from the outside, but the inside it would plug in, sure, but then it would zap you really hard because there was no insulation. For years, Amazon's maintained in multiple lawsuits that it's only the conduit between buyers and sellers and therefore not liable for products sold by third parties. But in a landmark ruling in July,

federal regulators determined Amazon can indeed be held responsible for recalls of defective goods. It could be something that is not, you know, was made with lead or, you know, if it's a toy, particularly an infant's toy, if it detaches or if it's got a battery that is, you know, is prone to catch fire or to overheat. Some of Crye's camouflage is sold legitimately on innocuous products on Amazon, from camping chairs to wallets to belt bags. But for Crye's biggest customer base military and police, the authenticity of the multicam pattern is essential for keeping them safe. These shapes and colors are tuned so a soldier hiding in grass but being viewed through night vision goggles will be concealed. This though, because it is knockoff. When viewed under night vision, it is glowing a solid white. So if a soldier was having this bag

on his back or carrying it, it can be seen from miles away. In another high-stakes example, Crye teamed up with the Office of the Inspector General to raid a counterfeiter operating right nearby in Brooklyn Navy Yard. The government agency who had purchased these was under the impression that the MultiCam products were flame resistant, which they were not. We were able to seize the counterfeit non-flame resistant materials, and in fact, the principles of that company are in jail as we speak. Cry says its partnership with Amazon CCU and law enforcement resulted in search warrants in Texas and California, and the seizure of several truckloads of counterfeit multicam goods. They've really given us the additional power to, at least insofar as the Amazon platform is concerned, make far more headway than we ever would have been able to do on our own. We cover the cost of the investigation, understanding

that they may not have those teams that can cover that for them. We cover that cost. We cover the cost of a lawsuit, understanding that they may not have the resources to hire an outside counsel, Smith says. The CCU also shares data about suspected counterfeit sellers with law enforcement and brands, citing several times when that's led to successful pursuits. In a prosecution in the District of New Jersey, where an individual was sentenced to six and a half years for selling counterfeit Cisco switches and servers, and was required to forfeit over $100 million in illicit proceeds. Amazon has also recently taken influencers to court over a new type of counterfeit scheme. Social media influencers, using what's known as generic link schemes, where they will promote a generic link and direct their followers to a page within an e-commerce store. And when that customer makes that purchase, they

receive a counterfeit luxury item, for example. Of course, plenty of cases don't get tackled directly by the CCU, so Amazon has rolled out other programs like Brand Registry, where sellers can enroll and, if approved, use tools to search for and report counterfeits through a direct portal. We can upload images of MultiCam as an example, and I guess it's some level of artificial intelligence are there and will cull what it perceives as potentially problematic products, and that our team can then review and validate the authenticity or not, of our brand. Registry tool also has our transparency tool, which allows brands to affix serialization to their products that can help our fulfillment centers and law enforcement identify authentic or inauthentic products. Sellers on brand registry can apply for an even more robust program launched in 2019 called Project Zero,

which auto scans billions of listings daily to detect counterfeits and let sellers remove listings on their own immediately without using Amazon as an intermediary. Tools like that aren't really available on very many other platforms that I'm aware of, and certainly weren't available on Amazon 5 or 10 years ago. It's undeniable that they've made progress. They've also gotten a lot bigger, and so their size still is an appealing target for fraudsters. Amazon can only pursue fraudsters if they know who they are, and online marketplaces can be an easy place to hide. It's very easy for a counterfeit network to set up a storefront on a marketplace, and so even a marketplace in good faith, that's trying to play whack-a-mole, is going backwards. Once somebody has set up that storefront and has probably started moving thousands of dollars' worth of counterfeit merchandise, that's.

Why Amazon has rolled out a series of more robust seller verification tools in recent years that involve things such as requiring identification through live interviews, also looking at information such as bank accounts and IP addresses to identify the actual seller who is setting up that account. Grier went through the verification when she set up a new Amazon account as a seller in 2021. I had to do a video interview with an Amazon employee, and I got a postcard in the mail with a code on it, and so they were able to prove that I am the person who is on my ID, and that I provided them an address that I had access to. And for new sellers of major brands like Hasbro and Cuisinart. Amazon will check invoices to prove items are legitimate, although the system is far from perfect. We've also identified bad actors who use fake and fictitious IDs to set up accounts to get past our

gates. We've identified schemes such as gating schemes, where bad actors will submit fake invoices as a way to get past our proactive tools. With the rise of overseas sellers, foreign shop names, and varying international regulations have made it harder to tell who you're buying from and who to contact in case of a problem. China historically does not have very good protections for intellectual property, certainly not the intellectual property held by non-Chinese individuals or companies, and as a consequence of that, really has become sort of a haven for this type of bad activity. In the US, there's a new piece of federal legislation designed to help the Inform act, which went into effect last year, requires online marketplaces like Amazon to get detailed information for high-volume third-party sellers or face penalties of more than $50,000 per violation. The measure was about creating some measure of

transparency, you know, shining sort of a light on the dark corners of the internet, because we knew that a lot of these high-volume sellers were moving either stolen or counterfeit products from behind a screen name and not much else. Last year, Amazon says it stopped more than 700,000 selling accounts from being created because of suspected ill intent. Still, solving counterfeits for good may simply not be possible at the sheer scale of a marketplace like Amazon. This is always going to be a problem that we have to fight. There's no doubt about it. Bad acting printers overseas can make multicam on its face look quite real and very hard to identify. So without Amazon having the same tools and experience that we have here, stuff is simply going to slip through. Plus, the sheer volume of products that Amazon sells creates what I'm sure is an almost impossible mountain to climb to ensure that this

Amazon Has A Counterfeit Problem — Here’s How It’s Fighting Back

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브루클린의 창고에서 특허받은 위장용 멀티캠을 사용하여 경찰복과 군복을 수작업으로 제작하는 Crye Precision은 아마존에서 판매하고 있습니다.

Crye는 매년 수백만 달러의 손실을 입는 위조품 범죄자들에 대해 아마존과 공동 소송을 제기했습니다.

2020년에 출범한 아마존의 위조품 범죄 전담반은 이후 21,000명 이상의 위조범을 추적하고 법 집행 기관과 협력하여 700만 개의 위조품을 압수했으며, 위조품과의 전쟁에 12억 달러를 지출했습니다.

아마존은 중국에서 50건 이상의 조사를 실시하여 100명 이상의 위조범을 체포했으며, 런던시 경찰과 협력하여 급습 조치를 취했습니다.

이커머스의 성장으로 인해 Crye와 같은 소규모 브랜드는 온라인에서 확인하기 어려운 위조품의 표적이 되고 있습니다.

저가의 위조품은 매출에 타격을 주고 브랜드 평판을 위태롭게 하며 심지어 고객의 안전에 위험을 초래하여 모조품 Apple 충전기로 인한 감전 사고와 같은 비극적인 사건으로 이어질 수 있습니다.

결함 상품 및 위조 상품에 대한 아마존의 책임

연방 규제 당국은 위험한 장난감과 모조품을 포함한 결함이 있는 제품의 리콜에 대해 아마존이 책임을 져야 한다고 결정했습니다.

군용 및 경찰 장비를 판매하는 Crye는 아마존 및 법 집행 기관과 협력하여 위조품 판매자들과 싸우고 있으며, 그 결과 위조품을 성공적으로 급습하고 압수하는 성과를 거두었습니다.

Amazon의 CCU는 법 집행 기관에 리소스와 데이터를 제공하여 위조품 판매자를 성공적으로 기소하는 데 중요한 역할을 했습니다.

위조품 방지를 위한 아마존의 노력

아마존은 셀러가 위조 리스팅을 신고하고 삭제할 수 있도록 브랜드 레지스트리 및 프로젝트 제로와 같은 다양한 프로그램을 시행하고 있습니다.

아마존은 인공 지능과 데이터 기반 도구를 사용하여 잠재적으로 문제가 될 수 있는 제품을 식별하고 실시간 인터뷰와 문서 확인을 통해 판매자 검증을 제공합니다.

이러한 노력에도 불구하고 온라인 마켓플레이스의 규모와 익명성 때문에 사기를 완전히 근절하기는 어려운 환경입니다.

게이팅 계획과 가짜 송장은 악의적인 행위자가 사전 예방 도구를 우회하기 위해 사용하는 일반적인 전술입니다.

해외 판매자의 증가와 다양한 국제 규정으로 인해 평판이 좋은 벤더를 식별하기가 더욱 복잡해졌습니다.

새로운 미국 연방 법안은 대량으로 거래하는 제3자 판매자에게 상세한 정보를 요구하여 투명성을 높이는 것을 목표로 하고 있지만, 아마존과 같은 마켓플레이스의 엄청난 규모 때문에 위조품에 효과적으로 대처하는 것은 끊임없는 도전 과제입니다.