Imitation Nation
The Imitation Nation podcast covers all things counterfeit, reviewing the most recent news about counterfeit products, seizures, and prosecutions.
Episodes
EMERGENCY POD: End of de minimis and Type 86: what is means for counterfeits
On this week’s episode of Imitation Nation, we discuss one of the biggest trade policy shifts in years: the end of De Minimis, which officially expired at midnight through an Executive Order. This sudden end to a decades old policy is sendi…
Imitation Nation Episode 16: The end of de minimis
In this episode of Imitation Nation, hosts Shabbir Imber Safdar and Sven Bergmann break down one of the biggest trade shifts of 2025: the imminent and likely permanent end of the de minimis. With more than 1.3 billion packages entering the…
Episode 15: End of de minimis and many other stories
This White House has made big changes to De Minimis: For a look at the scale of packages, check out this CBS News piece. We cover the impact on counterfeit medicines, especially fake fentanyl pills, and techniques that companies might start…
Episode 14: Operation Pangea 17, Lululemon suing Costco, and China protecting IP
Operation Pangea 17 from Interpol was released. See this fancy graphic. Sven looked back at the previous 10 years of Operation Pangea and these results are record breaking by any measure. 50.4 million doses of illicit pharmaceuticals wort…
Episode 13: Unusable Graphics Cards and a Win in the Sneaker Industry
Tom’s hardware review ran an article this week about a chinese pc repair shop that received four of these, and upon closer examination, three of them were fake and unrepairable and unusable. They had modified older cards and in some cases a…
Episode 12: Operation RapTor, Fake Money, New Counterfeit Pill Tech
PSM did a video story on the Heal The World civil suit from Gilead Sciences, accusing the pharmacy in NYC of trafficking in counterfeit HIV medicine. We discuss the massive four-continent bust that Europol coordinated of dark web sellers o…
Episode 11: Fishy Freight, Nike's Counterfeit Win, and Shipping Fraud
PSM released a report this week on fishy freight shipments of medicine into the country, using data we pulled from the FDA’s medical freight shipments database. We are finding two kinds of fraud here. First, we’re seeing shipping manifests …
Episode 10: The End of De Minimis and the Rise of Evasion
The end of de minimis started on Friday May 2nd. That affects 1.36bn packages that enter the country every year. This change will affect both consumers that buy cheap products from China but also businesses in the U.S. that source their pro…
Episode 9: End of de minimis from China, USTR Special 301 report, and fake body armor
AI being used to do fraud at scale, including a report from Europol, and a report from Food and Beverage Magazine. Also, AI is being used to generate patent applications, which is probably going to bury a lesser-staffed USPTO.  Shabbir tal…
Episode 8: Our Fake Stamp Experiment and Concerns About Tariffs
In this episode, Shabbir and Sven talk about… Counterfeit forever stamps. Shabbir bought stamps that are too cheap to be true and is sending three letters to Sven, two with fake stamps and one with a real one, to see if they arrive. Remembe…
Episode 7: Fake Ozempic, fake stamps, and fake airbags.
Go now and donate to support Sven's Police Unity Tour 400 mile ride.   A pharmacy ordered Ozempic from a distributor out of Florida and dispensed it to a patient. It was one of those dial a dose pens and the dial didn’t match their prescr…
Counterfeit coffee, counterfeit cosmetics bust, and those Chinatown cheap fake bags.
Sven and Shabbir discuss three big stories of the wee: Reuters story on the Brazilian coffee industry’s concerns with products that have Brazil in the name of the product, but don’t contain Brazilian sourced coffee beans. A case, invest…
Imitation Nation February 11: Fake Lululemon at Costco and Other Fakes
Since clothing is not a regulated product like medicine, people who want to make cheap knock offs have a lot more ability to infringe on the original design by making a few changes. What we haven’t talked about is the fact that the US has a…
Imitation Nation January 28, 2025
This week on Imitation Nation, Shabbir and Sven will tackle the case of "DrXanax" a Canadian national who was just sentenced to 30 years in the U.S. They also cover the indictment of a New York aesthetician who allegedly posed as a medical …
Imitation Nation, January 10: Fake Birkin Bags and the Notorious Markets Report
Sven and Shabbir discuss the biggest stories in counterfeits for the last two weeks. Walmart.com "Birkin Bag" controversy Yahoo! News Columbia Journal for Law and the Arts The U.S. Trade Representative's Notorious Markets Report See the …
Imitation Nation December 17: Legal Cases and Lawsuits
This week, Shabbir Safdar and Sven Bergmann cover the arrest of a Houston, Texas woman accused of posing as a medical professional and injecting fake lip fillers, a woman in Medina, Tennessee busted selling research-only compounds as weight…
Imitation Nation, December 6, 2024
This week, Shabbir Safdar and Sven Bergmann cover an $18 million dollar counterfeit Gibson guitar seizure in Long Beach, the resolution of a longstanding counterfeit HIV drug case, counterfeit bourbon, and a live  DSCSA demo that happened a…