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A fake black lambskin Chanel bag being offered for 6,340 yuan at a Chinese wholesale market in Wuhan – complete with counterfeit receipts suggesting it was originally bought in a store in Hong Kong's Prince's Building for HK$39,800. Photo: Xinhua

Faking it: sophisticated Chinese counterfeiters even create Hong Kong store receipts to fool knock-off luxury goods buyers

Chinese retailers of knock-off luxury merchandise are so sophisticated that they are even providing fake invoices and credit card receipts to fool customers that the products were bought in Hong Kong, state media reports.

An undercover investigation carried out in eight mainland provinces and cities by Xinhua news agency, which was reported on Sunday, also found that the trade in counterfeit goods remains vibrant despite an official crackdown on the practice.

Reporters found that the barcodes of some fake receipts actually displayed the genuine addresses of Hong Kong stores.

Collaboration between online vendors and shops is also commonplace. Customers shopping online are able to access catalogues of products that claim to be from Hong Kong stores selling luxury brands, but in reality they are high quality knock-offs, Xinhua said.

It said a wholesale market in Wuhan was found to be selling counterfeit Prada, Chanel, Burberry, Louis Vuitton merchandise for between 200 yuan (HK$243) and 5,000 yuan.

Although some of the items were clearly knock-offs, it was also selling high-quality-looking goods as genuine products. They were being offered along with fake receipts from Hong Kong stores, to convince unsuspecting customers that they had originally been bought in Hong Kong and then shipped to the mainland for resale.

One vendor, identified by her surname, Zhang, showed two invoices to undercover reporters for a fake black lambskin Chanel bag, which she claimed showed that it had been bought for HK$39,800 from the Chanel boutique at Prince’s Building, in Central.

She was selling the bag to customers for 6,340 yuan – but was prepared to sell the item for an additional 70 per cent discount off that price.

Knock-off goods were also on sale in boxes, showing barcodes at Guihuagang Leather Market at Guangzhou.

When the barcodes were scanned, addresses identical to those of stores in Hong Kong were displayed, Xinhua said.

The fake invoice of a counterfeit Prada bag stated that it had been bought at a Prada outlet in Hong Kong for HK$23,800.

It was unknown whether potential customers really believed the goods on offer were genuine because fake invoices and credit card receipts are being sold openly at the market.

“The usual knock-offs could be sold at 700 to 800 yuan a piece at most, but with packaging such as boxes and invoices, the price can go up to 2,000 to 3,000 yuan,” one vendor in Wuhan said.

Some shops keep their counterfeit products hidden to avoid being caught out by the government crackdown. They collaborate with online stores to sell to customers. People can choose products from online catalogues and they can either order the goods online or collect the goods themselves by going to the stores.

At another wholesale market selling clothes in the city of Chenzhou, in southern Hunan province, piles of blank T-shirts were seen by undercover reporters, alongside other T-shirts displaying brand-name labels.

One vendor said available labels included Playboy and Goldlion.

Vendors at another market in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, said they can produce anything made by leading clothing makers such as Adidas, Nike, Columbia and The North Face, as long as they had sample clothes and labels.

A number of blankets, all printed with designs featuring luxury brand names, including Coach and Louis Vuitton, were being sold for 37 yuan each at a market in the city of Haimen, in Jiangsu province.

One vendor at the market told the undercover reporter that laundry instruction labels, displaying the brand name of a luxury clothing manufacturer, could be added for 1 yuan, but this fee would not be charged for single orders of more than 100 blankets at a time.

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