Since 27 June 2023 a US online marketplace has been required to collect, verify and show you a high-volume third party seller's full name, physical address and a working phone number, email address or direct-messaging route — clearly and conspicuously, on the listing itself, along with a mechanism for reporting suspicious activity. Most buyers have never noticed it. This book cannot tell you whether your item is fake. It tells you what you are owed before you buy, what customs can seize afterwards, and which of your remedies are law rather than a company's policy.
INFORM Consumers Act, 15 U.S.C. §45f, effective 27 June 2023.
Every ‘ten ways to spot a fake’ list in circulation is published by a brand-protection vendor, an authentication service or a marketplace, and each of them is selling something. So this book prints no authentication checklist and no global counterfeiting market-size figure — and gives you the disclosure the law already requires, and the seizure data a government agency actually publishes, instead.
On which year's seizure figures: CBP has published a fiscal year 2024 report, but every attempt to retrieve the file returned a server error and CBP's own summary page was still displaying fiscal year 2023 as its current figures when this was written. So the 2023 figures are printed and dated as such, rather than a newer number taken from a third-party summary. That is why the book tells you to go to cbp.gov and look at the statistics page yourself.
The seller name, the company name, or the name by which the seller operates — on the product listing or in the order confirmation, in a clear and conspicuous manner. 15 U.S.C. §45f.
Same requirement, same place. A physical address is a fact you can check; a post box in a country with no connection to the goods is a fact too.
One of the three, and it must be current and working. It is what turns an anonymous storefront into someone who can be held to account.
Electronic and telephonic, for reporting suspicious marketplace activity. It is a separate route from the refund claim, and it is the one that reaches the marketplace's integrity team.
The book is built around the listing in front of you and the order you do things in afterwards. Each step has a question, a letter or a script attached to it.
Not the photographs. Not the price. Full name, physical address, contact route, reporting mechanism — then, and only then, the price against the brand's own or an authorised retailer's, which takes two minutes of searching.
Nothing shown means either the seller sits below the 200-sales-and-$5,000 threshold, where nothing is required at all, or the marketplace is not complying. It does not by itself tell you which. Letter 7 asks the marketplace which.
The reporting mechanism and the Regulation Z billing-error notice are law. The marketplace guarantee is that company's own terms of service — fast, generous and withdrawable. The Lanham Act counterfeiting remedy is not available to you at all; it runs to the trademark owner.
Regulation Z's official interpretation says the section does not apply to a dispute about the quality of property the consumer accepts. Say you ordered a genuine branded item and received something else. Letter 3 is written that way.
Photograph everything first, save the listing page as it appeared, then the seller, the claim, the report, the billing-error notice — and do not return the item without instructions in writing saying what happens when you do.
Instant download. PDF and DOCX, so the letters can be edited rather than retyped.
Sixteen chapters in four parts — the disclosure you are owed, what the government actually knows, what you can actually do, and the border, the criminal law and the question everyone gets wrong.
Five rows. If you cannot fill in the first three, you are buying from someone you cannot identify — which may be fine, and which you should at least know.
To the seller, this is not genuine; a report through the marketplace's reporting mechanism; a billing error notice framed as not-as-agreed; escalation to the marketplace after a refusal; an IPR Center report narrative; an FTC report narrative; and a request for the seller disclosure the Act requires.
The marketplace, when the claim was refused; your card issuer, framed correctly; asking a brand whether it will confirm in writing; the seller, once; and customs, if a parcel was detained.
Six routes with the legal basis for each and a plain verdict — law, company policy, a government channel that will not refund you, or a remedy that runs to the brand owner rather than to you.
Fiscal year 2023: 19,522 shipments seized, roughly 23 million counterfeit items, over $2.75 billion at manufacturer's suggested retail price, with the categories by value, by count, and by source economy.
Why a true counterfeit mark gets no personal-use exemption under 19 CFR §133.21, what changed on 29 August 2025, why the $800 de minimis exemption is terminated by statute from 1 July 2027, and the seven steps if a parcel is detained.
Before you buy; when it arrives and something is wrong; and if a parcel is detained. Three lists, printable.
Four prompts that genuinely help, what an assistant is good and bad at here, and the one thing never to do — paste a photograph and ask ‘is this real?’.
Eight places to report or check with what each one will not do, eight terms in plain English, and every source listed by name.
No US government publication supporting a trillion-dollar counterfeiting number could be found. The nearest thing located was an international estimate on the order of $461–509 billion attributed to the OECD and the EU Intellectual Property Office — roughly half a trillion, not two. The book did not open that report either, so it does not print that figure as verified.
Every list available is published by a brand-protection vendor, an authentication service or a marketplace, and each is selling something. What you get instead is the information the law requires the seller to disclose, which is verifiable, and the government data on what actually gets seized, which is real.
A marketplace guarantee resolves enormous numbers of cases quickly. It is also a term of that company's service agreement, changeable or withdrawable at will, with no regulator behind it. The book tells you which of your six routes are which.
The fiscal year 2024 CBP report it could not retrieve. The ‘ten deaths linked to counterfeit airbags’ claim it could not trace to NHTSA. The forty-nine state statutes it did not check. A CPSC aggregate for counterfeit-product recalls that does not appear to exist in citable form.
The introduction and Chapter 1. Between them: what the marketplace is legally required to show you about the seller, where to find it, and what its absence means.
Chapter 8, in order — photographs and the listing screenshot first, because listings get edited and deleted.
Letter 4 and Call script 1 ask for the decision and the reason in writing, then Letter 3 gives notice of a billing error before your card agreement's deadline.
Chapter 11. Read the notice for the reason, the options and every deadline, then Call script 5 — and ask for the answers in writing. A detention pending examination is not the same as a seizure.
Letter 7 asks the marketplace whether the seller falls below the threshold or the disclosure is simply missing. Those are different answers.
It cannot tell you that, and says so. There is no authentication checklist in it, on purpose, and Chapter 13 explains why never to ask an assistant either.
One state statute was verified — Louisiana's — and the book refuses to generalise from it to the other forty-nine.
It covers United States rules.
A parcel seized as a counterfeit is a civil forfeiture of the item — your money is gone and so is the parcel. The pre-purchase worksheet in Chapter 1 is free to fill in and takes two minutes of searching.
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An explanation of consumer protection and customs rules. Not legal advice, and reading it creates no professional relationship. It cannot tell you whether a particular item is counterfeit.
The trillion-dollar numbers in circulation could not be traced to any source, and Chapter 5 says so rather than repeating one. What is printed instead is what CBP actually seized in a stated year. That is a smaller claim and it is a true one.
Every ‘ten ways to spot a fake’ list available is published by a brand-protection vendor, an authentication service or a marketplace. The book will not add another, and takes no position on any authentication service.
eBay's own Money Back Guarantee policy, cited in Chapter 3 as an example of a marketplace guarantee and identified as a company policy rather than law. No brand-protection vendor, authentication service or marketplace supplied a statistic to this book.
This edition has just been released. Rather than publish testimonials from people who do not exist, these spaces are held for the first genuine reader reviews. On a product whose whole argument is that untraceable figures should not be trusted, that seemed like the only defensible choice.
If Letter 7 got you an answer about a missing seller disclosure, we would like to hear what the marketplace said — and to publish it in your own words, with your permission.
We will not publish claims about money recovered. Whether a marketplace claim or a card dispute succeeds depends on things no document controls.
Reserved for someone who looked for the seller disclosure before buying, could not find it, and decided not to buy. That is the chapter we would most like to hear worked.
Not as a federal crime, if it is for your own use. The offence in 18 U.S.C. §2320 turns on trafficking, which §2320(f)(5) defines by reference to commercial advantage or private financial gain. But the goods themselves get no personal-use exemption at the border under 19 CFR §133.21 and can be detained and seized. Both halves are true at once, and anyone who tells you only one is telling you half the answer. Chapter 9.
The Lanham Act's counterfeiting remedy at 15 U.S.C. §1117(b) attaches to use of a counterfeit mark in connection with the sale, offering for sale, or distribution of goods. It runs to the trademark owner against sellers and distributors. A consumer who owns a fake is not the target of that provision — and cannot use it against the seller either.
For a high-volume third party seller — 200 or more discrete sales and $5,000 or more in gross revenues in a continuous 12-month period during the previous 24 months — the seller's full name, physical address, and a current working phone number, email address or other means of direct electronic messaging, clearly and conspicuously on the listing or at order confirmation. Plus a reporting mechanism on the listing.
No. It means either the seller is below the threshold and nothing is required, or the marketplace is not complying. What it does mean is that you are buying from someone you cannot identify. Letter 7 asks the marketplace which of the two it is.
The honest answer is that this book can tell you what US Customs seized in fiscal year 2023, with the categories and the source economies, and cannot tell you the size of the global market, because the figures in circulation could not be traced to a publication. Chapters 4 and 5.
It depends on how you frame it. Regulation Z's official interpretation excludes disputes about the quality of property the consumer accepts, but the billing-error process covers property not delivered as agreed. Say that you ordered a genuine branded item and received something else. Chapter 7 and Letter 3.
Both. Every purchase includes the PDF and an editable DOCX, so the letters can be filled in and sent rather than retyped.
Email sales@viralbydesign.co within 7 days of purchase for a full refund. No forms, no explanation required.
Open it, look at the listing you are considering, and read Chapter 1 to find out what the marketplace is required to show you about the seller. If it is not what you expected, email sales@viralbydesign.co within 7 days of purchase and you get a full refund. No forms, no explanation required.
Since 27 June 2023 a US online marketplace has had to collect, verify and display a high-volume seller's full name, physical address and a working contact route — on the listing itself. It is not decorative. On 5 September 2025 the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice announced that the operator of the Temu marketplace had agreed to a $2 million civil penalty and an injunction, over allegations including failing to provide a working telephone reporting mechanism, omitting seller identification information on some listing formats, and burying the required disclosures.
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