Brand protection during the pandemic
Counterfeiting continues to spread globally like a plague. In recent years, with the expansion of the Internet, brand-protection teams have had to battle with counterfeiters online, usually with limited resources to tackle these illicit traders. Fake goods are sold online directly to consumers, one item at a time, often by formidable and well-hidden criminal networks.
In 2017, Global Financial Integrity found that transnational crime turned over between $1.6 trillion and $2.2 trillion annually, with counterfeiting valued as the most lucrative crime ($923 billion to $1.13 trillion) followed by drug trafficking ($426 billion to $652 billion). Despite this, counterfeiting is a low priority for enforcement officials, making it a low-risk, high-reward crime. Although fake goods are often of poor quality and potentially dangerous, consumer demand for these goods is high. Under these circumstances – high demand and weak enforcement – anti-counterfe
In this episode of
Track the Vax, Serena Marshall discusses scams based on COVID-19 treatments and vaccines with Mike Alfonso, an assistant special agent in charge at Homeland Security Investigations (the investigative arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and the agent coordinating the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center)’s COVID-19 vaccine investigations.
Collaborating with several different federal agencies, including the FBI, the IPR Center is specifically geared toward trade and protection of public safety and public health with a focus on imports or exports or as Alfonso says, “what comes into and what leaves the country.”
Operation Stolen Promise Targets COVID-19 Fraud
Fraud in times of pandemic
The new pandemic has taken its toll on the world and certainly changed the way members of society fundamentally interact with each other. From life in general to the finest details of everyday life, everything changed in 2020. From these changes, criminals were no exception. They have used their ingenuity to adapt to these new times and develop new methods of scamming people. Times of uncertainty create the perfect context for creating new fraud schemes that usually affect the most vulnerable of us.
During the last year, many financial institutions have issued warnings about new risks and implications that could emerge during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially through financial crime. In an interview from April 2020, the president of FATF had said that national authorities and international bodies are alerting citizens and businesses of these scams, which include impostor, investment, and product scams, as well as insider trading in relation to COVID-19. L
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