Dealers in counterfeit products are using online auction sites to sell their wares that they pass off as genuine.
The Customs and Excise Department says this is a new method that is used to evade detection by their new monitoring system.
The number of counterfeit goods cases has been rising steadily, from 26 in 2008 to 47 in 2009, and to 49 last year. There were 26 cases in the first half of this year, similar to the same period last year. Most of the cases involved Yahoo Hong Kong's auction site.
Sandra Tam So-ying, superintendent of the intellectual property investigation group, said vendors selling counterfeit goods often disguise the fakes as second-hand products to confuse potential buyers and lure them to pay higher prices.
'They sell them as genuine goods to avoid our surveillance online,' she said.
'But we will be able to discover that [nonetheless], when the victims lodge a complaint.'
This year, the department set up an online system to monitor local auction sites 24 hours a day, searching for fake goods using keyword searches.