Amazon Sues Bad Actors Attempting To Use Social Media To Knowingly Sell Counterfeit Luxury Items

(RTTNews) - Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) and its Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU) announced Wednesday the filing of two new lawsuits against Kamryn Russell, Ashley Hawat, and their co-conspirators who knowingly attempted to evade Amazon's brand protection systems in an effort to promote, advertise, and facilitate the sale of counterfeit luxury fashion goods such as jewelry, handbags, and accessories.

Amazon works across the globe to fight counterfeiters, filing joint lawsuits with brands to eliminate the sale of counterfeits not only in Amazon's store but across the supply chain. In 2022, the CCU sued or referred for investigation over 1,300 criminals in the U.S., UK, EU, and China.

In this case, both Russell and Hawat attempted to use a "hidden links" scheme in which they posted links on their social media pages that directed their followers to seemingly generic product listing pages in the Amazon store.

Russell and Hawat's co-conspirators disguised the infringing nature of the products they were selling in order to avoid detection by Amazon and the brand, often by blurring the brand's logo.

Russell and Hawat's social media posts then made it clear to their followers that if they purchased these seemingly non-infringing and non-branded products, they would actually receive counterfeit luxury products.

These bad actors also urged their followers to buy these products before Amazon could take down the listings.

When Russell or Hawat's followers used the posted links to purchase the counterfeit products, Russell and Hawat received a commission for that sale.

Russell and Hawat not only attempted to profit off of the sale of fake goods that could damage the reputations of the multiple luxury brands they counterfeited, but their actions also negatively impact the thousands of legitimate content creators.