Selling Counterfeit Goods Is A Felony
I personally know first hand about selling counterfeit goods. I sold them for almost a year on a website after being told by an attorney that it was legal as long as I was honest about the authenticity of these products and had a Federal Tax ID. Come to find out I was not give the best advice and found myself being charged with another felony for selling counterfeit goods. I would like to share my story with you.
In January 2007 at the age of 20 I was having a hard time finding a decent job with a felony on my record. I was trying to find a way to start a small business with very little money to invest. When I would go to the local flea markets I would see a bunch of tables set up with all kinds of knock off designer products. These tables always had a swarm of customers. I thought to myself I could do this! I started to look up websites that sold wholesale replica designer apparel. The search engine results were endless. I found one that had a chat room and talked to a women named Fang she offered me amazing deals on all kinds of merchandise. I told her I had very little money to invest so I would need to start small. She told me I could sell these products on eBay or my own website and would not have to buy the items until I sold them and they would drop ship the items directly to my customers. This sounded like a great opportunity and I was eager to start selling.
Since I had no knowledge of starting a small business I made an appointment to speak with my attorney. He advised me to get a Federal Tax ID and made sure that I clearly started on my website and in eBay listings that my products were indeed replicas and not authentic. He said as long as I do these things I would be conducting a legal business and would not have any problems as long as I paid my taxes on time. I told my family and friends about my new venture and they were all very happy to see I was doing something positive and productive.
I started to create my website with HTML that I had taught myself it was taking a long time and I was running out of money and needed to pay bills. I decided that while I was creating the website I could sell a few things on eBay to keep my head above water. My first listing was for a replica Coach bag. The duration of the listing was suppose to be for 7 days. Surprisingly after being listed for less than 24 hours eBay took my listing down and said I was in violation of their eBay policies for selling counterfeit goods. I thought to myself well yeah I said it was a replica! I wrote eBay asking why my listing was taken down when I was being honest about the authenticity. They replied back to me that the selling of counterfeit goods on eBay was against their policys. They never told
