34 industries, 62,000 stalls, 320,000 commodities for sale, 4 million square meters of selling space: welcome to the world-famous Yiwu Wholesale Market in the Zhejiang Province of China, "where Santa Claus comes to shop." [more inside]
posted by DarlingBri on Oct 16, 2009 - 8 comments

Jan Chipchase is employeed by Nokia in the "corporate anthropology" field, but he considers it "design research," as he's not an anthropologist by training. His work covers researching how people modify their phones in China, India, Ghana, and elsewhere, adding features or extending battery life. He also tracks how cellphones are associated with personal identity and how they are playing roles far from urban and suburban centers. In some locations, cell phone numbers are written above doorways for identification, when there is no official map or organization for streets. He also blogs about his experiences, and his most recent post, he covers the rise of "Super Fakes." [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Sep 3, 2009 - 16 comments

CounterfeitChic.com's latest roundup of world news stories on knockoffs. Via.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Jul 24, 2008 - 11 comments

Super funny money turning up on the world stage
Along with pranks going on in the gulf this week, some funny stuff going on with US Currency as well - Perhaps part of the explanation of the seemingly endless run on gold?
posted by specialk420 on Jan 13, 2008 - 52 comments

A nation of outlaws. A century and a half ago, another fast-growing nation had a reputation for sacrificing standards to its pursuit of profit, and it was the United States.
posted by Kirth Gerson on Aug 27, 2007 - 18 comments

Busted! In one of the biggest counterfeit busts in years, a 19-month investigation reached its climax on Tuesday as federal officials conducted early-morning raids throughout the NY metropolitan area, arresting 29 people, seizing more than $230 million in merchandise and ultimately dismantling three operations believed to have imported more than $700 million in fake products over the last 24 months.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Jun 27, 2007 - 147 comments

Fake Chinese Gylcerin kills hundreds, possibly thousands. So, if you thought melamine in pet food and food chain animal feed was bad, how do you feel about antifreeze in your medicine? The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a warning to drug manufacturers, suppliers and health professionals that counterfeit drug additives have been using diethyline glycol, or DEG (commonly used as antifreeze) as a substitute for glycerin in cough medicine, fever medication and injectable drugs. Hundreds, possibly thousands have been killed.
posted by dejah420 on May 7, 2007 - 79 comments

“I always say that if North Korea only produced conventional goods for export to the degree of quality and precision that they produce counterfeit United States currency, they would be a powerhouse like South Korea, not an industrial basket case.”
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jul 24, 2006 - 18 comments

Newspaper Snippet Generator
posted by crunchland on May 9, 2006 - 17 comments

Great fakers scammed ancient Italy. An ingenious counterfeit-coin scam has been rumbled by scientists in Italy. But no one is going to jail, because the forgers lived more than 2,000 years ago.
posted by riffola on Mar 28, 2006 - 7 comments

At the CCC, we're dedicated to putting an end to the victimization associated with purchasing a counterfeit MINI Cooper.
posted by tomplus2 on Mar 23, 2005 - 19 comments

Check out the new $200 bill.
posted by sierray on Sep 15, 2003 - 19 comments

Man Sells Fake Bronze, Gets Paid With Fake Cash. From the You-Can't-Trust-Anyone-Anymore Dept.: "A Vietnamese man who used cow fat and paint to pass off a lump of iron as valuable black bronze found buyers, but was paid in counterfeit bills."
posted by tpoh.org on Jun 29, 2003 - 9 comments

$100 million in fake software seized .The copies of Windows Millenium and Windows 2000 Professional were indistinguishable from the real thing except for their failure to crash every 15 minutes(I made that up).Ever burn a copy for friends? Is that wrong?
posted by Mack Twain on Nov 17, 2001 - 31 comments

Can you make change for a $200 bill? Looks like one store was able to.
posted by milnak on Jan 30, 2001 - 10 comments

No more Mister Nice Guy. They've built a web crawler looking for piracy sites. It should be interesting. I wonder how many computers and how much bandwidth they're assigning to the job?
posted by Steven Den Beste on Aug 2, 2000 - 6 comments