It seems unlikely that many people would willingly put urine, arsenic or lead on their faces in the pursuit of beauty, and yet...
.. Yet the City of London police warned last year that their investigations and raids on the producers of illegal cosmetics in the UK found counterfeit perfume containing cyanide and human urine, while fake cosmetics could contain toxic levels of chemicals and harmful substances such as arsenic, mercury and lead. As well as carcinogens such as beryllium and cadmium.
So that cheap make-up suddenly looks less like a good idea.
And it’s not just in the UK, of course. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration received nearly 12,000 instances of consumers reporting adverse effects tied to cosmetics from January 2018 to March 2020.
It’s a significant and growing health risk from an illegal industry estimated, by the OECD to be worth $54 billion a year and rising significantly as consumers buy more and more from unregulated sellers on social media and open online marketplaces. The growth of influencer marketing has, inadvertently, opened up the market to abuse with consumers unable to tell the difference between the real and the false brand online.
The social media monitoring company RedPoints reckons that 87% of purchases on the fake market now start on social platforms, before being redirected to eBay, AliExpress or other marketplace sites where the proliferation of apparent small traders makes regulation and detection nigh on impossible.
It also creates regulatory issues. While consumers consider the marketplace (eBay or Amazon) to be the arbiters of what is legal, the courts say it is the final seller. And when those are already willingly breaking the law, then clamping down becomes difficult.
And, while some consumers may suspect that buying brand names at a significant discount might involve them dabbling in law-breaking, many do not, such that the poor quality of their purchases is reflected on the brand reputation of the genuine companies - reputational insult is added to financial injury.
While some may not have too much interest in the violation of the intellectual property of global companies, the nature of the crime gangs involved means that their profits and funnelled into other engagements, such as drug and arms smuggling, people trafficking, identity theft, money-laundering and child pornography. And, according to Interpol, there is even evidence of profits from counterfeiting funding terrorist activity.
Find out more about how Crime Stoppers International is tackling the Illegal Empire.
