Amazon has unveiled its Counterfeit Crimes Unit, a global, multi-disciplinary team that includes former federal prosecutors, experienced investigators and data analysts. The negative impacts of counterfeiting are high: counterfeit products are estimated to have cost the global economy $323 billion in 2018.
The new Counterfeit Crimes Unit, which will investigate cases where a bad actor has tried to evade Amazon’s systems by listing a counterfeit product, will mine Amazon’s data; cull information from external resources such as payment service providers and open source intelligence; and leverage assets “on the ground” to connect the dots between targets.
Establishing this group is just the latest attempt by Amazon to stem the flow of counterfeit products sold on its site. In March 2019 Amazon launched Project Zero to detect fake products before they are purchased. At that time, the e-Commerce giant unveiled tools capable of scanning more than 5 billion product listing updates per day in search of fakes. In November 2016, Amazon filed its first-ever lawsuits against alleged counterfeiters… Retail TouchPoints