If you’re price-shopping online for deals on name-brand Christmas gifts, your odds of getting “Dove lotion” full of harsh chemicals or a “Romex” instead of a Rolex just went up.
Third-party sellers are flooding digital marketplaces with a rising tide of knockoffs from countries like China as more Americans seek discounts to cope with high inflation this season, officials warn.
“If a product’s price seems too good to be true, it may be counterfeit,” Nikki Fleming, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, told The Washington Times. “Don’t buy it.”
Cheap imitations of name-brand products often appear in social media ads and pop-up links, experts say.