#Amazon and Salvatore Ferragamo crackdown on counterfeiters

Amazon and Salvatore Ferragamo are cracking down on counterfeiters they have caught trying to use Amazon’s site to sell knockoff luxury goods.

The Seattle-based web giant and the Italian fashion label jointly filed two lawsuits in federal court in Washington state against four individuals and four entities alleging trade infringement and customer deception.

“We do not allow counterfeit products in our store, and we have made it crystal clear that we take aggressive action to hold accountable bad actors who attempt to evade our proactive protections,” Dharmesh Mehta, vice president, customer trust for Amazon said in a statement.

In June, Amazon created a “Counterfeit Crimes Unit” and has since filed joint actions with Italian luxury brand Valentino, cosmetics brand KF Beauty, family travel accessory brand JL Childress, and Yeti.

“We are working closely with luxury and cosmetics brands, small businesses, and brands with global name recognition,” Mehta said.

Ferragamo also has its own counterfeit measures in place. In 2020, law enforcement seized 240,000 products bearing Ferragamo’s trademarks worldwide offline while its online monitoring initiatives blocked three million scammers from selling its goods and some 94,000 counterfeit goods were removed from online auction sites, the company said.

Ferragamo has also filed actions against hundreds of illegal websites through civil proceedings in New York federal court, and was recently awarded $2.8 million in damages.

Five of the defendants in the Amazon-Ferragamo complaints, charged with fraudulently selling belts under the Ferragamo name, are based in China and the other two could be in China or North Carolina or California, according to the complaints. Several other defendants are presently unknown.