It has come to our attention that there is a serious counterfeit operation selling large numbers of CDs via Amazon’s FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) system.

It appears that this product is manufactured in China, but is almost indistinguishable from the genuine article to the extent that even the legitimate manufacturer cannot tell without very close examination.

The pirates are pricing slightly below the legitimate product and getting the “buy box” on Amazon. This enables them to take over sales, leaving the real thing on Amazon’s shelves and depriving artists, writers, labels, publishers, and distributors of any revenue from those sales.

Please note: The counterfeiter seems to be targeting fast moving recent releases and is able to bring illicit copy CDs to market within about two weeks of release date.

If you identify any product as counterfeit, please notify us immediately and retain any evidence.

If the label or distributor uses their copyright tool, Amazon will remove the fake product, but they only remove each SKU as it is reported leaving that pirate store’s other counterfeit releases up for sale.

It is worth noting that Amazon groups all products with the same UPC in the same bin, so product bought through the counterfeiter’s stores might result in legitimate product being delivered to the customer but the money will go to the counterfeiters.

Here are a couple of screenshots showing how this works:

Here you can see the seller is CALLAway in the buy box. The counterfeiters are using multiple store names.

Here you can see how they are an FBA seller. By undercutting legitimate inventory by $0.04 they are getting the buy box ensuring the legitimate product remains on Amazon’s shelves.

Again, if you identify any product as counterfeit, please notify us immediately and retain any evidence.

Here is a list of stores that are believed to be selling counterfeit product but they change names regularly:

See A2IM site for updated list of traffickers.