ICCE reports on Brother’s recent success in Germany where Brother discovered a network of counterfeiters selling fake toner cartridges on Amazon.
Brother International Europe Ltd. is the European sales headquarter of Brother Industries, Ltd. Towards the end of 2019, Brother received several customer complaints and negative reviews on its products sold on marketplace giant Amazon, the Imaging Consumables Coalition of Europe, Middle East and Africa (ICCE) reported.
According to the report, after months of conducting investigations, Brother discovered a network of counterfeit sellers that led to a highly successful raid operation in conjunction with German authorities in Berlin. During the raid in late 2019, thousands of counterfeit Brother retail packaging boxes with fake holograms were seized. Amongst the findings, there was a clear lead to additional implicated sellers in this criminal network.
In early 2020, Brother conducted a second successful warehouse raid in conjunction with German authorities where thousands more counterfeit products were confiscated which included pallets of counterfeit flat packaging and retail boxes, fake labels and other packaging materials bearing the Brother trademark.
A spokesperson from Brother said: “Brother places its customers first everywhere, every time. We are committed in detecting counterfeits online by working with our partners and law enforcement authorities in order to protect our customers.”
Brother is a member of ICCE, the Imaging Consumables Coalition of Europe, Middle East and Africa. ICCE has been operating since 1997 and is an authoritative, effective and respected global voice leading the fight against intellectual property crime in imaging consumables. It is the collaboration between law enforcement and ICCE members that enables the effective pooling and exchange of intelligence which achieves results in the fight against counterfeiters.
