By Austen Hufford 

This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (May 6, 2020).

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 companies to identify suspicious shipments and take down suspect online listings for masks and other gear. The intellectual-property unit said the companies have agreed to share information and best practices with it to combat such trade.

"This information-sharing effort allows the government to then make more informed decisions about targeting suspicious international shipments," said Lev Kubiak, chief security officer for Pfizer, which is working on an experimental coronavirus vaccine.

As the new coronavirus has spread across the U.S., government officials, health-care executives and private citizens have increased 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 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 and Border Protection has seized nearly 500 shipments of unauthorized products, including protective equipment and products that purport to test for or treat the disease, ICE said. And agents from Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of ICE, 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. They include 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, a major supplier of N95 masks, has filed around 10 federal lawsuits in recent weeks against entities the company says 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 06, 2020 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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