one site advertised a $68 free people kimono for $21

how fake online stores will sell you overpriced retail junk

'I feel cheated': Thousands of fake online stores are rushing to cash in

The photo on the left shows a $2,495 coat made by Overland Sheepskin. The photo was used on a fraudulent website to sell coats of lesser quality. The website used a photo of replica designer handbags the Overland Sheepskin coat in its advertisement. (Overland Sheepskin; Amber Bass) (Courtesy of Overland Sheepskin/Photo by Amber Bass)

By

The image on the website showed a full length coat of buttery sheepskin and plush gray fur.

"It was paper thin, like it was made of felt," said Bass, 43, an attorney in Austin. "And the fur if it even was fur looked like something you'd find on roadkill or a rat."

http://sheti74706.blogspot.com/2020/06/woman-charged-after-her-dog-kills-27.html Online fraud: 5 ways to protect yourself as you shop

Online scams are as old as the Internet, but consumer fraud experts say sketchy offers have snowballed in the rush to cash in on holiday shoppers, who are expected to spend a record $143 billion online this season. And as consumers become more comfortable buying from overseas merchants, no name Instagram accounts and on their phones where it can be trickier to discern whether a site is legitimate high quality replica handbags china it all adds up to diminishing oversight and more opportunities for fraud.

At Overland Sheepskin, a family run business in Fairfield, Iowa, executives say they have been fighting an uphill cheap louis vuitton bags from china battle against websites that use its photos to misrepresent themselves as vendors. Overland shared a spreadsheet of 753 such sites it has identified since early November and says dozens more crop up daily, highlighting both an explosive growth in new types of consumer deception and the fact that retailers and shoppers have little recourse.

"This is organized fraud on a massive scale," said Gabriel Openshaw, Overland's vice president of e commerce. "These sites are stealing our images and sending customers horrendous looking knockoffs or replica louis vuitton handbags nothing at all in exchange for their money."

Most of those sites 90 percent, according to Openshaw are hosted by Shopify, a leading Web platform that backs more than 1 million merchants. The Washington Post viewed numerous images of what appeared to be Overland merchandise hosted by sellers on Shopify's site, many of whose store pages resemble each other. (The Post sells branded T shirts and other merchandise through the Shopify platform.)

http://sheti74706.blogspot.com/2020/06/woman-charged-after-her-dog-kills-27.html In recent weeks, lawyers and executives at Overland say they have reported hundreds of sites to Shopify and have sent multiple notices to the company's legal team, according fake designer bags to documents Overland shared with The Post. Shopify has removed some of the offending images and sites; others, including KeliSexin, remain active even after Openshaw and his team have flagged them nearly a dozen times.

Amy Hufft, a spokeswoman for Shopify, said the company treats concerns about its merchants "very seriously." An internal team monitors for fraudulent activity, she said, and s shops "when necessary."

KeliSexin did not respond to an email seeking comment. Nor did most other merchants contacted by The Post; one sent a form email requesting more details.

A Washington Post analysis of dozens of Shopify backed websites found photos lifted from more than 20 major brands, including J. Crew, Ralph fake louis bag Lauren, Boden, Max Mara and All Saints. One site advertised a $68 Free People kimono for $21, while another claimed to be selling a $6,990 Max Mara cashmere coat for $47. (A representative for Max Mara said the company is working to "monitor and repress" such instances of fraud. The other brands and websites did not respond to requests for comment.)

$39 knockoff

The Canada cheap replica handbags Goose Rossclair Parka is made with duck down and fur, and retails for $995. BonaChic did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Toronto based Canada Goose says it has had 30,000 fake online ads and websites removed in the past year. The retailer said it works ly with local law enforcement to identify and seize counterfeits at production sites around the world, and trains customs officials on how to identify counterfeit products as they're aaa replica designer handbags being moved across borders.

Upscale retailers tend to be major targets, security experts say, because they often have impressive, high quality photos. Their products are also highly coveted, making them ripe for counterfeits and scams.

replica louis vuitton bags Globally, counterfeit goods are expected to become a $1.82 trillion market by 2020, according to a report by Research and Markets. And although many of those fraudulent transactions still take place on sidewalks and in storefronts, experts say a growing number are moving online to keep up with shifts in consumer spending. Major e commerce players such as Amazon are also doubling down on third party vendors, resulting in less control over what is being sold on leading sites, and how.

A Washington Post analysis last month found a "continued abundance of counterfeit goods" on Amazon, including knockoff Herms bracelets and imitations of Louis Vuitton, Fendi and Gucci handbags. The company says it uses "sophisticated tools to combat bad actors," and has more than 5,000 employees devoted to protecting vendors and consumers from fraud and abuse. (Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

The selection of counterfeit goods on Amazon is vast, from bracelets to belts to bags. We bought a few of these items to compare to the originals. (The Washington Post)

At Overland, executives said they Discount Replica Louis Vuitton Bags discovered the problem in late October, when a Google Shopping search for "sheepskin replica louis vuitton bomber jacket" appeared to turn up two websites that were offering its products at steep discounts, using the same names, images and descriptions as on Overland's site. Those sites have since been taken down. But 1:1 replica handbags hundreds of new ones have appeared, many of them hawking the same sheepskin coats and leather jackets for a small fraction of their suggested price.

"I've never seen anything remotely to this," he said. "Obviously, this is the worst possible time of year for us to be dealing with this.".