Counterfeiting

Football jerseys, designer clothes and children's cards: here are the online and social markets for fakes

Operations by the Guardia di Finanza released in recent days have uncovered new ways of promoting and selling irregular goods. Businesses often in the millions

by Rome Editorial Staff

3 May 2026

GUARDIA DI FINANZA, GDF, AUTO, 117 IMAGOECONOMICA

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Key points

Live streaming to sell counterfeit clothes
The blitz during the social live
Also QR codes and author guarantee
The Maxibusiness of Fake
Smartphone gaming cards and accessories
The scheme for online sales of counterfeit football shirts

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Luxury clothes. Shoes with well-known brands. Designer bags. Children's playing cards. Football and basketball jerseys. All rigorously fake. The three maxi-inspections conducted by the Guardia di Finanza in Florence, Turin and Catania and announced in the last few days show how counterfeiting represents a pivot around which the criminal economy revolves, resulting in double damage for companies and consumers. And watch out for new channels to promote sales, such as in Catania, where real telematic fake markets have been identified and discovered.

Live streaming to sell counterfeit clothes

The yellow flames of the second group in Catania managed, in fact, to get to the managers of the social profile and to locate the warehouse, located inside a courtyard in the centre of Catania, which was used as a logistical base to organise 'telemarkets'. From here, through live streams, they displayed the entire sample of counterfeit products and collected orders from connected customers.

The blitz during the live social

The raid by the Guardia di Finanza during the social live broadcast shone a spotlight on a counterfeit warehouse: shelves, displays and boxes containing over 1,200 products, including bags, garments, shoes, jackets, belts, wallets and other accessories, all bearing counterfeit trademarks of well-known luxury, casual and sports brands.

Also QR codes and author guarantee

The items had very similar characteristics to the originals: neat materials, labels, packaging and even QR codes printed on the boxes in an attempt to make the originality and provenance of the products more credible. In some cases there was even a 'seller's guarantee'. All the merchandise, including that contained in several packages ready for shipment, was seized in order to be formally submitted to the expertise of the firms and agencies that protect the brands traceable to the fashion houses involved.

Catania, vendevano prodotti contraffatti online: la gdf interviene durante la diretta streaming

The Maxibusiness of Fake

The counterfeiting market represents a maxibusiness against which to focus attention and operational forces. The Florentine yellow flashes, under the impetus of the Florence provincial command and in implementation of the directives of the Tuscany regional command, have already been preparing an action plan for months, characterised by risk analysis to identify, both in the provincial capital and in the hinterland, the places where counterfeit goods are stocked and to interrupt the trade.

Thus, the military of the second metropolitan operational nucleus of the Tuscan capital seized, at various showrooms and retail shops between Sesto Fiorentino and Impruneta, 700 pairs of shoes, 350 women's bags and 400 jackets, in some cases resold at prices not far below those charged by the parent company for regular products - for a counter-value of approximately EUR 550,000 - with the counterfeit logos of well-known Italian and foreign brands, including luxury maisons, as well as the equipment used for production and packaging.

Smartphone Game Cards and Accessories

In other interventions, however, the Compagnia Pronto impiego Firenze (the so-called 'green berets') discovered 2,900 counterfeit products, including items that are very popular with young people, such as dolls/peluches and cards of a well-known board game, and telephone accessories. In these cases, the counterfeit goods, with an estimated counter value of approximately 31,000 euro, were discovered inside two shops in the historic centre of Florence, near the Santa Maria Novella station, and a shop in Sesto Fiorentino.

The scheme for online sales of counterfeit football shirts

In Turin, on the other hand, the economic-financial police unit of the Guardia di Finanza discovered a real scheme for the online sale of counterfeit football and basketball shirts. About 10,000 counterfeit jerseys were allegedly sold over a period of about two and a half years. In practice, the counterfeit trading ring was based on four steps:

1) Uploading images of the products offered on online sales sites;

2) receiving customer orders via an e-commerce platform, through an automated purchasing procedure;

3) The order was processed by foreign companies located in China, which manufactured the counterfeit shirts and shipped them directly to the end customer;

4) dispatch of the goods by drop shipping, which allowed the goods ordered to be delivered to the end customer without the need for them to pass through a physical warehouse.