#counterfeit — Public Fediverse posts

💊 That prescription bargain in your feed? Pause before you click “buy.”
A slick website can sell a very bad idea. Know the red flags, check the pharmacy, and know what to do if the pills or packaging don't look right.
Your medicine cabinet deserves better than a mystery box. 🧪📱
💊 https://shorturl.at/Kixxd
#ConsumerAlert #MedicationSafety #OnlinePharmacy #ScamAlert #ConsumerProtection #Health #Medical #Counterfeit #Fentanyl

What To Watch On YouTube Right Now – Part 151

Welcome back my readers, YouTube viewers and all others who followed this series of articles focused on YouTube videos worth watching.

Have you been searching for something fun or interesting to watch on YouTube? Do you feel bored right now and you crave for something to see on the world’s most popular online video destination?

I recommend you check out the following videos I found.

#1 Ashleigh Burton reacts to Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb – When it comes to movies about the Cold War and the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb stood out with its very unique presentation backed with memorable performances by Peter Sellers and George C. Scott. The film was a satire about the Cold War tensions between America and Russia, and it gave moviegoers a unique look as to what could have happened behind the secured government offices and how each nation communicated with each other over the hotline. Kubrick’s film is so significant, it got featured in many movie reaction videos on YouTube and I had fun watching Ashleigh Burton’s reaction video. Go watch it now!

https://youtu.be/0UvpfBk4Kmw?si=FxiDWW7e-nuh0uXa

#2 Behind the Scenes Making of Resident Evil (1996) – It has been over thirty years since Resident Evil was first released and today it has grown into a multimedia entertainment franchise still driven by video game productions. Although many video game publications published a lot of articles about the original game from 1996, none of them captured the behind-the-scenes making at Capcom which the YouTube video below features. Even if you are not a Resident Evil fan, I still encourage you to watch it as you can learn a lot about the process, the hard work done by the Japanese and insight shared by Shinji Mikami.

https://youtu.be/fAL9T9U2xTE?si=8Ubd690wH15EmiVK

#3 The Multi-million Dollar Theft With Fake Coupons – Over a decade ago, someone in the state of Arizona started an illegal operation using fake coupons which grew so dramatically, it became a shadow enterprise and two more people got involved. The operation of multiple fake shopping coupons robbed corporations several millions of Dollars and the one who started it got so rich she even bought herself many luxury vehicles. To find out the details about this true crime story, watch the video below and pay close attention.

https://youtu.be/Aggc-E0T2ak?si=Xk1F8CtTkaQV8TZ1

#4 Austria Fought Back Against Islam – Massive immigration that includes Islamists who are obsessed with conquering new nations is very clearly dangerous and even toxic. With so many illegal aliens/immigrants and Muslims in Europe, it is clear that the future of the Europeans is looking more uncertain as time passes. Among them is Austria which boldly made changes to prioritize its own people and preserve its rich culture by pushing back hard against Islamists. Already there were Islamic scandals that were uncovered there in Austria. Watch and learn from the Fall of Nations video below.

https://youtu.be/n5MVM52exGs?si=uH6a53eb4aE5fxWJ

#5 The Fall of BuzzFeed – Remember how popular BuzzFeed was? Even though a lot of people got lured by them, I never trusted BuzzFeed and I was never interested with their videos and other online gimmicks. BuzzFeed was also a very questionable participant in journalism no matter what they did to gain credibility. Fortunately for the world, BuzzFeed collapsed and deservedly so. To find out why, watch MAGAmark’s video below.

https://youtu.be/SikAZ0zaQ7g?si=BVVNDGBR0BgVg8-6

#6 Record-breaking Rainfall Hits Chiba Prefecture in Japan – Apart from being vulnerable to earthquakes which is connected with being located within the Pacific Ring of Fire, Japan also has its share of struggles with immense rainfall and flooding. Recently, record-breaking rainfall hit Chiba Prefecture causing a lot of flood and hardship for the Japanese. If you were a constant visitor to Japan, was there ever a time when you got caught in heavy rain and flooding there? Watch and learn from the Nippon TV video below.

https://youtu.be/5Su4DzVfZkk?si=r66FP6RNdsfHH-Vr

#7 Role-playing Games About 1990s Anime – Believe it or not, there are indeed role-playing games (RPGs) based on anime properties that were popular in the 1990s. Of course, a lot of those anime-based RPGs were released only in Japan and some of them became playable with English translations through digital patches, emulation and fan-made translations. If you are into retro gaming, anime, RPGs and the 1990s, watch the Gaming Broductions video below.

https://youtu.be/cK2Gp-mosxo?si=laqA-8XHec40S9zc

#8 Assorted Pacific Rim Reaction Videos – When Pacific Rim was released in cinemas worldwide in 2013, I never bothered to watch it in the local cinema. Here in the Philippines, there was a lot of pre-release buzz that Manila would appear in the movie and so many local film buffs got excited. The movie eventually grossed over $400 million worldwide through theaters and a lot of people enjoyed its high-quality visuals, intense battles and the special attention to detail invested on the size and scale of the locations. The movie has been featured in several reaction videos and posted below are the entertaining ones to watch.

https://youtu.be/k9jIe3pN6Dk?si=WM6NvAh-8gvx_Jow

https://youtu.be/uVEqUuGtrd4?si=J8kt1MeCAXL5yIhr

https://youtu.be/uoNPvcreM8s?si=UVW8q4m2a7ov9fLI

#9 Ranting for Vengeance Slams Video Essay Slop on YouTube – It is not a secret that YouTube is filled not only with artificial intelligence (AI) slop but also video essays made by individuals who arrogantly think of themselves as experts and wise creators. In his recent video, Ranting for Vengeance slammed the video essay slop on YouTube and explained in detail what kind of people created those videos, what their agenda and why people should not allow themselves to be influenced by them. I encourage you to watch the video below now.

https://youtu.be/r8hhXBuXNb4?si=z_nZ3U4n_QGwNaFC

#10 Shallow Focus is a Disease in Movies – There is a new trend that has influence the production of movies in Hollywood (AKA Commiewood) for many years now and it has literally become a disease which made the viewing of movies undesirable. The disease is shallow focus which occurs when the area of sharpness in front of a camera lens is very narrow which results in blurry backgrounds. Shallow focus is being abused in modern-day filmmaking and it is only getting worse. That said, I encourage you all to watch Rowan J Coleman’s video below and share it to as many film buffs as possible.

https://youtu.be/2I4X14L5WsA?si=cSdYmBW4QTsqR6hH

+++++

Thank you for reading. If you find this article engaging, please click the like button below, share this article to others and also please consider making a donation to support my publishing. If you are looking for a copywriter to create content for your special project or business, check out my services and my portfolio. Feel free to contact me with a private message. Also please feel free to visit my Facebook page Author Carlo Carrasco and follow me on Twitter at @CarloCarrascoPH as well as on Tumblr at https://carlocarrasco.tumblr.com/ and on Instagram athttps://www.instagram.com/authorcarlocarrasco

FIFA World Cup, fake football jerseys worth over £18M seized

British authorities have seized counterfeit football jerseys and other fake merchandise worth more than £18 million during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. According to officials, demand for fake jerseys surged during the tournament. However, authorities warned that t…

https://justpaste.in/news/fifa-world-cup-fake-football-jerseys-worth-over-18m-seized/

#jerseys #fake #counterfeit #football #seized

The EU hits AliExpress with a €550m fine over illegal products.

AliExpress has been hit with the record €550 million fine for failing to tackle sales of illegal, unsafe and counterfeit products on its platform.

The fine was the third issued by the European Commission under the EU’s landmark Digital Services Act, which requires very large online platforms to do more to counter illegal and harmful content.

https://mediafaro.org/article/20260720-the-eu-hits-aliexpress-with-a-550m-fine-over-illegal-products?mf_channel=mastodon&action=forward

#AliExpress #EU #ECommerce #Counterfeit #DigitalServicesAct #DSA

Italy Seizes 2.5 Million Litres of Fake Wine Worth Over €4 Million https://www.diningandcooking.com/?p=2700979 #BrunelloDiMontalcino #counterfeit #DOCG #FakeWine #ItalianWine #italy #Prosecco #Wine

Are Counterfeit, Scam SD Memory Cards Really a Problem? https://petapixel.com/2026/06/18/are-counterfeit-scam-sd-memory-cards-really-a-problem/ #counterfeit #memorycards #Equipment #Features #feature #sandisk #sdcard #lexar #scams #News #owc #sd

How Benjamin Franklin stopped colonial money counterfeiters with ahead-of-his-time science

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.upworthy.com/how-benjamin-franklin-stopped-colonial-money-counterfeiters-with-ahead-of-his-time-science/

When 170 #books go missing -

Inside Operation Pushkin: Trial Exposes Multi-Million Dollar #RareBook Heist | Streamline https://streamlinefeed.co.ke/news/inside-operation-pushkin-trial-exposes-multi-million-dollar-rare-book-heist

#counterfeit #forgery #libraries #Europe #Russian #Pushkin #heritagepreservation

Just a reminder about the associate dangers of buying cheap tat from Amazon, Ebay or a myriad of online ‘stores’ where bugger all attention is paid to certification (beyond forging a kite mark) and who will take no responsibility for the goods that they have sold.

More than half of the chargers failed electricity safety checks conducted by Which (a UK consumer protection group).

#Safety #CaveatEmptor #Counterfeit

💁🏻‍♀️ TIL: Long before flying his kite, #BenjaminFranklin was experimenting with materials to stop counterfeiters from faking #colonial paper #money. 💵

Centuries later, scientists at #NotreDame used advanced microscopes to analyze hundreds of surviving bills and found Franklin was using graphite-based ink instead of common soot ink, and embedding tiny mica particles into the #paper that shimmered when tilted. He even printed leaf vein patterns as unique anti-counterfeiting marks. 🔎

👉 https://theconversation.com/we-analyzed-paper-money-printed-by-ben-franklin-to-uncover-his-anti-counterfeiting-techniques-and-materials-innovations-282943

#counterfeit #history #printing #pennsylvania #philadelphia #science #engineering #invention #currency

TikTok Introduces Counterfeit Protection

https://www.jckonline.com/editorial-article/tiktok-counterfeit-protection/

#tiktok #tiktoknews #tiktokcounterfeit #counterfeit #shopping #tiktokshop #shopprotection #tech #technews #socialmedia #socialnetworks

It is not very clear to me what they are talking about.

Are these counterfeit original records, or are they unofficial records?

There is a difference between them, and unofficial records are sold by big distributors!
#records #vinylrecords #vinyl #vinylcommunity #music #counterfeit #unofficial

NME: 6,500 counterfeit vinyl records seized by police in UK raid
https://www.nme.com/news/music/6500-counterfeit-vinyl-records-seized-by-police-in-uk-raid-3944794

Wads of counterfeit cash have been arriving in Australia, with experts warning the fake banknotes are becoming so realistic, you could be using them without realising.

#ABCNewsAustralia #counterfeit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbJ0ClDFDtk

Wanna counterfeit currency notes? AI can help you with that. 💵

https://www.deccanherald.com/india/gujarat/yoga-guru-his-followers-arrested-with-over-rs-2-cr-counterfeit-money-made-using-ai-3938999

#AI #currency #counterfeit

@ntnsndr @404mediaco

Shyte.

AI, given our water, land, gigawatts of power to make brain scrambling, child slaughtering, castles of ignorance, is this decade's Asbestos.

#ai #datacenters #crypto #counterfeit #coup #oligarchy #iran #climate #war #dems

Among the recipients: a man whose daughter had given millions to a #Trump backed #superPAC, a former governor of #PuertoRico, a former #FBI agent who had pleaded #guilty in a political #corruption case & a California woman whom Trump had granted relief once before.

The woman, Adriana Camberos, was initially convicted in 2017 for her role in a scheme to sell millions of #counterfeit bottles of the caffeinated drink 5-Hour Energy.

#law #criminal #corruption #felon47

#Adventures in #AliExpress seller #scams ... 😆

1. Buy bag of small "cubic zirconia" stones from AliExpress.
2. Wait for delivery.
3. Open package.
4. Get suspicious based on feel of stones.
5. Slice a "stone" with a utility knife, successfully.
6. Then melt it with a simple 200 C air gun.

Pretty sure cubic zirconia doesn't slice like an unripened cheese...

#scam #CubicZirconia #CZ #rhinestone #acrylic #fake #counterfeit #ReallyDude #NotTrying

How to Spot a Counterfeit Lithium-Ion Battery

https://spectrum.ieee.org/counterfeit-lithium-ion-batteries

#HackerNews #How #to #Spot #a #Counterfeit #Lithium-Ion #Battery #counterfeitbatteries #lithiumionbattery #batterysecurity #electronicsafety #technews

#OTD (Oct 25) in 1909, Sam 'Lockin' Lucchino of #PittstonPA goes under cover for the U.S. #SecretService and makes a purchase of #counterfeit bills from New York-based mafioso Giuseppe #Boscarino.

#MafiaHistory #Histodons @mafiahistory #NYC

Pacotille and Counterfeits: Swiss Junk Watches of the 19th Century

It was a difficult time for buyers and dealers of watches: Cheap imports were flooding the market, built by unskilled peasants and even children working in substandard conditions, with little care for functionality or longevity. And making matters worse, many were designed with the appearance and even the name of famous and respected companies. How could respectable companies fight back? How could consumers protect themselves?

Incredibly, I am not describing the current state of the Amazon-Temu world, or even the so-called quartz crisis. This is a description of the flood of Swiss watches on the American market in the middle of the 19th century, a period of chaos that nearly wrecked the Swiss watchmaking industry before it truly began. Ill-finished and semi-functional watch movements were sold abroad in bulk containers, and Swiss companies specialized in counterfeit watches in the Glashütte, English, and American style. The situation was so bad that one 1868 commentator lamented that the Swiss were “imposters and cheats” who had ruined the reputation of their country’s products!

How did it come to this and why has this been forgotten? It was the rise of mechanical production colliding with international conflicts and the loose control of international trade. Once these issues were resolved, Switzerland rose to dominate watchmaking in the 20th century by abandoning the ideals of Daniel JeanRichard and taking mass production further and faster than its originators in England and America.

Daniel JeanRichard’s Accidental Legacy

It may seem cruel to begin this story by recalling Daniel JeanRichard, but his legacy of hand-made piece-work by rural farmers in the Swiss Jura was a blessing and a curse. We tend to romanticize it today, but there is no doubt that the etablissage tradition flooded the market of poor-quality watch components. It was only the crushing success of industrial watchmaking in Switzerland that gave the nation its current reputation for precision and quality. And this came despite vigorous opposition from the watchmaking establishment.

JeanRichard could never have foreseen any of this. As I recently described, he was a gifted craftsman who applied existing techniques in gunsmithing, metalworking, and clockmaking to build the first Swiss watches. When he and his apprentices were active, in the early 18th century, this was the only means of production. And their incredible skill established the remote Swiss Jura mountains as a credible competitor to the hand-made watches of Geneva, Paris, and London. But perhaps the craft of watchmaking was too-broadly adopted in the region.

Japy and Fontainemelon began producing plates and bridges in volume, standardizing on a few simple component sets, even though true interchangeability was a century away. So demand rose for the components needed to turn these ebauches into watch movements.

Between 1750 and 1850, thousands of craftsmen in the Swiss Jura began producing watch components at home. Each specialized in wheels, springs, pinions, or other components, producing sacks of rough parts. It’s not that the Swiss Jura craftsmen were unskilled: The story of the farmer and his family making watches through the winter has largely been debunked. But these metalworkers were paid based on the volume of their production and they were not involved in final assembly. So it is no surprise that these wheels and springs weren’t ready for use.

These were collected and brought to centers like Le Locle, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Fleurier, and Neuchâtel. The best components were painstakingly re-finished and fitted at the shops of the etablisseurs to create functional watches. The jobs were numerous, fueling the growth of these cities: Demonteurs disassembled the watches, planteurs re-drilled the pinions, repasseurs adjusted the timing, and remonteurs re-assembled the movement. This in addition to the expected graveurs, guillochers, doreurs, and acheveurs needed to finish the watches.

The opportunity brought by the etablissage system flooded the market with watch components, many of which were of dubious quality. Although the Swiss Jura produced many excellent movements, the bulk of the output was barely functional and required serious re-work before it could be sold.

Barrels of Worthless Trash

The worst of the worst was literally tossed in a chest or barrel to be exported in volume as pacotille. This word simply means “junk” in French, but it has important historic connotations. The barrels of beads and trinkets that were traded around the world by conquerers, profiteers, and swindlers for native furs, metals, and other commodities were also called “pacotille.” In the same way, the bulk of Swiss watchmaking output was shipped to other countries for local watchmakers to try to piece together. And even in Switzerland these questionable watch movements were called by the same name.

The resulting watches were “worthless trash”, according to William Keith, apprentice to pioneering American watchmaker Luther Goddard. They “exhausted the pockets and patience of the owners, and in a ten-fold greater degree, the patience of the watch repairer,” reported Keith. “Impatient under the torment,” Luther Goddard would regularly groan and set aside his work, telling his apprentice that “Job was not a watch maker.” Keith merrily reported that frustrated buyers would eventually pass these watches on to peddlers, who would melt them down for the scarce gold and silver they contained.

As poor as these watch components were, they served to stifle local production in America. Numerous English, French, and German clock and watch makers migrated to America before the Revolution in 1776, but very few ever attempted to build their own watches. Instead, they assembled watches from widely-available components, mostly in the bulky English verge and fusee style. The surviving examples mainly use high-quality parts imported from England rather than anything made in the colonies or Switzerland.

American Industry Rises to the Challenge

Thomas Jefferson’s Embargo Act of 1807 and the following War of 1812 changed everything. With foreign imports restricted, Luther Goddard seized the opportunity to produce watches at his workshop in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. In just 5 years, the Goddards were able to produce over 500 watches, with many of the components produced in the forge and tools of their own shop. This was America’s first watch factory. Production stopped in 1817, when the Treaty of Ghent ended the war and the embargo, but Goddard inspired a generation of American watchmakers.

American industrial watchmaking rose to become the best in the world in just a single generation. Goddard’s first apprentice, Jubal Howe, witnessed this first-hand, graduating to become the leading watchmaker in Boston. Howe saw the potential in a young man from Maine, Aaron Dennison, his own apprentice in Boston who traveled to England to learn from the best watchmakers there. Dennison was inspired by the Springfield Armory in central Massachusetts, which began producing muskets on an industrial scale based on common machine-made parts.

Dennison’s dream of mass-produced watches came to fruition thanks to his partnership with Boston clockmaker Edward Howard and watchmaker and entrepreneur William Keith, the Goddard apprentice mentioned above. Together they founded the great watch factory in Waltham, halfway between Shrewsbury and Boston, which applied the principles of mass production to watchmaking. The American Civil War drove massive demand for rifles and watches, and the Springfield Armory and Waltham Watch Company rapidly scaled production in the 1860s.

The Swiss delegation to the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia was astonished to see what the Waltham factory was capable of. Théodore Gribi and Jacques David of Longines issued urgent warnings to their counterparts at home, and factories there rapidly adopted the techniques of mass production. But the Swiss were not as foolish as this story suggests: The Waltham factory was barely 20 years old by this point, and the great factories in New Jersey, Illinois, and Pennsylvania had just opened. Back in Switzerland, the ebauche factories in Corgémont, Sonceboz, Cortaillod, Grenchen, and Madretsch were already producing movements using machinery, drawing the ire of traditional etablisseurs.

Swiss Clones and Counterfeits

Industrial-produced American watches were so good and so cheap that demand for hand-made imports quickly dried up. Machine tool technology advanced quickly near the end of the 19th century, spurring entrepreneurs to open new watch factories across the United States. Waltham and Elgin dominated the market by 1890, but Keystone, Waterbury, Dueber, Rockford, and others were also producing watches in volume.

The same process of industrialization was happening in Switzerland, despite vigorous opposition by the “old guard” etablisseurs. Bienne and Grenchen welcomed these new factories, as did smaller towns along the French/Swiss border. But Americans still preferred the heavy and rugged English-style watches produced by domestic factories to the more-refined products of Switzerland. And they were less familiar with Swiss watchmakers and brands. Switzerland quickly faced a new crisis of over-production, falling prices, and failing factories.

Seeking to better compete abroad, Swiss factories began producing watches more suited to the demands of local consumers. Along with fine Swiss crown-winding movements, they offered Glashütte three-quarter plate movements, English key-winding movements, and heavy calibers in American sizes. These were exported to be cased, finished, and sold by watchmakers and jewelers in America, Europe, and Asia.

Although some vendors proudly advertised these Swiss movements, many were sold in a less-honest manner. By 1885, the American publication Jewelers Circular wrote that “it has been known for some time that imitation American watches were being sold in Europe, in South America and some of the British Colonies.” It continued to point out that “the watches were made in Switzerland, and bore the name of the American Watch Company, Waltham.” Unsurprisingly, many of these found their way to American dealers as well. These journals published frequent stories of the discovery of counterfeit American watches at pawnbrokers, often discovered when local jewelers informed the factory representatives of cheaper suppliers.

“Imitation” American watches are common even today and are approached in a matter-of-fact manner at swap meets and by local collectors. An excellent 1960 article by Wesley R. Hauptman in the NAWCC Bulletin details a dozen such counterfeits spanning 19th century products from Goddard to Elgin, and a similar article by Jerzy Ganczarczyk appeared in 2003. The widespread acceptance of these fakes and forgeries speaks to just how common they were.

The issue of Swiss imitations and counterfeits was well-known even while it was happening. In the 1871 3rd edition of his book, “The Watch”, Henry-F. Piaget wrote of the “great mistake” made by Swiss watchmakers who put “English and fictitious names upon their watches, instead of their own.” This lead to their being unknown in America and “stigmatised as imposters and cheats, so that their watches, or at least many of them, were looked upon as disreputable pieces of workmanship, and the Swiss very nearly lost their American trade, and the reputation of being an upright nation.” Piaget recommended that Swiss companies proudly put their name on their best watches and develop real demand in export markets. And this is exactly what companies like Omega, Longines, Zenith, Vacheron & Constantin and many others did!

From Imitation to Imitated

We all know what happened next: The Swiss makers embraced precision manufacturing and industrial production as well as their own branding. Swiss cartels like Ebauches SA and ASUAG fought over-production and dumping of components overseas. Two world wars interrupted production in Germany, France, and America. American firms lost their advantage in manufacturing and the industry consolidated.

By the 1970s, once-proud American factories had closed, with most companies now focused on electronic watches. This too proved short-lived, as Japan, Hong Kong, and mainland China rose to conquer the mainstream watch market. By the 1980s, it was clear that branding was the most successful way to market watches, and the Swiss names were dominant. Today, a fight is underway over provenance of these once-proud brands, with the biggest consolidated into luxury groups and most of the rest being little more than a name. Who would have guessed that Hamilton would become a Swiss company while Movado and Invicta would be American brands? And the fight against junk and counterfeits remains just as pertinent today as it was in Luther Goddard’s time!

#AaronDennison #counterfeit #DanielJeanRichard #etablisseur #EuropaStar #HenryFPiaget #Landeron #LutherGoddard #LuxuryBrands #NAWCC #UniversalExposition #Waltham #WilliamKeith