Counterfeit goods
Fakes sold as genuine branded products, often unsafe as well as a rip-off.
Counterfeit goods are fakes passed off as genuine branded products — trainers, electronics, cosmetics, medicines and more — sold through convincing websites, marketplace listings and social-media ads. Beyond the obvious rip-off, counterfeits can be genuinely unsafe: unregulated cosmetics and medicines, electricals that ignore safety standards, chargers that overheat.
Scam shops advertise heavily discounted 'genuine' items, use logos and product shots copied from the real brand, and price things just low enough to tempt but not so low as to scream fake. Some send nothing; others send an inferior knock-off. Clues include prices well below the going rate, a seller with no verifiable history, sloppy spelling on packaging in photos, and payment nudged towards methods you cannot reverse. Buying from the brand's own site or an authorised retailer is the surest protection; where you cannot, pay by card so a misdescribed item can be challenged. The storefronts peddling these are often the same fake shops built to vanish overnight, propped up by fake reviews that manufacture a reputation the seller never earned.