ICE Partners With Amazon, 3M to Identify Counterfeit Coronavirus Gear
05 Maggio 2020 - 07:02PM
Dow Jones News
By Austen Hufford
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and companies including
3M Co., Amazon.com Inc. and Pfizer Inc. said they are working
together to curtail the flood of counterfeit masks, coronavirus
tests and other equipment entering the country.
The agency's center for intellectual-property protection said
Tuesday that it was working with those and other companies to
identify suspicious shipments and take down suspect online listings
for masks and other gear. ICE said the companies have agreed to
share information and best practices with ICE to combat such bad
behavior.
"This information-sharing effort allows the government to then
make more informed decisions about targeting suspicious
international shipments," Lev Kubiak, Pfizer's chief security
officer said in a statement.
As the new coronavirus has spread across the U.S., government
officials, health-care executives and private citizens have ramped
up purchases of masks and other medical gear. The demand far
outstrips domestic capacity to make many of those goods, even as 3M
and other companies have ramped up production.
That has led to a surge in imports of goods including masks and
protective gear -- some of it counterfeit or subpar -- from
unproven vendors. U.S. regulators and state officials have found a
significant number of imported masks are falling short of
certification standards.
"It poses a serious health concern to the American public when
they are wearing face masks that they think have the protection of
N95 masks but are really substandard," Steve Francis, director of
ICE's National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center,
said in an interview. ICE is a division of the Department of
Homeland Security. N95 masks are named for the 95% of very small
particles they are certified to block, including droplets
containing the virus.
The agency said it had identified more than 19,000 suspect
Covid-19-related domain names with the help of the companies in the
partnership and is working to take many of them down. U.S. Customs
has seized nearly 500 shipments of unauthorized products, including
protective equipment and products that purport to test for the
disease or treat it, ICE said. And Homeland Security agents have
opened 315 investigations and made 11 arrests of people allegedly
selling or shipping improper goods.
Mr. Francis said companies from different sectors and parts of
the supply chain are lending their expertise to the effort,
including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Citigroup Inc. and Merck
& Co., in addition to 3M, Amazon and Pfizer.
Some companies are also taking separate action against
counterfeit protective gear. 3M has filed around 10 federal
lawsuits in recent weeks against entities they say are price
gouging or selling fake products.
"We are going to see a flood of counterfeits hitting the U.S.
marketplace," Mr. Francis said.
Write to Austen Hufford at austen.hufford@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 05, 2020 12:47 ET (16:47 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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