According to the General Department of Market Surveillance’s (GDMS) Director General Tran Huu Linh, livestreams are channels through which counterfeit and low-quality products reach customers.

Instead of traveling tens of kilometers to reach to offline shops, people nowadays can sit at home and order the products they want. They just need to wait several days to get deliveries at home. Livestreams are being used to sell counterfeit goods.

On November 2, GDMS joined forces with the Gia Lai Market Surveillance Department and Pleiku Police to discover a counterfeit goods storehouse in Pleiku City in Gia Lai province.

At the storehouse owned by Truong Ngoc Quyen business household, state officers discovered a large amount of goods stored there.

Quyen registered business for the first time in March 2021, specializing in selling garments.

When searching the storehouse, inspectors found a lot of counterfeit cosmetic products bearing famous brands, such as Gucci, Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Lancome. There were products labeled as supplemental food, including weight loss food. They also found household-use appliances with no clear origins.

According to agencies, Truong Ngoc Quyen business household did not have physical shops. All the products are sold via e-commerce platforms. One of the channels is the personal Facebook page under the name ‘Ngoc Quyen Gia Lai’. The account has hundreds of thousands of followers. Meanwhile, livestreams are broadcast again at other accounts with the name ‘Ngoc Quyen’.

At the moment when the police came, a livestream was being organized on Facebook.

Counterfeit Gucci, Adidas and Nike shoes were offered at VND80,000-100,000 per product, while Versace, Gucci and LV watches and glasses were priced at VND30,000-200,000. 

According to Nguyen Huu Tuan from the Department of E-commerce and Digital Economy, the tricks played to sell fake goods are increasingly sophisticated. Sellers just need to run one link on 50 different fanpages and they will close the pages and erase all traces after several deals are closed. Therefore, state management agencies need to use technical solutions to discover the sellers. 

Linh of GDMS said fighting against fake goods sales on e-commerce sites is an important task in current conditions. Surveillance agencies will focus on performing the task in the next 3-5 years. E-commerce sites and social networks have been asked to help prevent trade fraud and say ‘no’ to accounts that don’t provide enough information.

Ngoc Cuong