- 6 minutes ago
How can fake Kylie Lip Kits and Mac Cosmetics be harmful? Find out as Refinery29 Beauty Editor Lexy Lebsack goes undercover on a sting operation to uncover counterfeit makeup in New York and L.A.
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00:03So we're going to meet the undercover operatives right now, make the buy, walk away, hand me the
00:07product that they purchased. If anything happens, I'm supposed to go into the bank immediately.
00:12Is this the black market? It's counterfeit goods. It's illegal activity. It's a black market.
00:16This is Shady. This winter, I got a tip that made my jaw drop. Car tables on the street in
00:24downtown Los Angeles lined with just released in-demand beauty products at a fraction of the
00:29retail price. Things that had just hit stores. And even to the beauty editor, they look totally
00:34authentic. So what's the deal? I headed downtown to see for myself.
00:47This is fake, but the good kind.
00:49So we can cut through to the alley here. Do you want to?
00:54All right. So we just walked into Santiali and we're going to look around.
01:07The prices in Santiali are astounding. It appears that MAC lipstick is going for $2,
01:12Urban Decay palettes for $15 instead of $50. So what's the catch?
01:17Some people are makeup artists that come down here.
01:20Really? Oh my gosh.
01:23So she says that makeup artists come down here and buy a lot of this stuff.
01:29The majority of the people we're talking to down here don't want to be on camera,
01:32but we found one woman who might talk to us. So we're going to go try to find her.
01:38So you have every brand that everyone wants. You have Too Faced, MAC, Kylie.
01:45Like how much, for example, is our, is a Kylie lip kit here?
01:48Yeah. It's $6.
01:49$6. Yeah.
01:50And then how do you sell them for so much less than you would find them like on Kylie's website,
01:55for example? Well, not lying, everything's from China.
02:00How do you get it? Where do you order it from?
02:02Online. Okay.
02:03A lot of people can afford a $30 lipstick, you know, so $5, $3, it's perfect to pay that.
02:10Yeah. I heard people be having reactions on things, but complaints, no. I use it myself.
02:17Oh, you do? Do you ever get scared that you don't know what's in it or like what the
02:21conditions are like in China where they make it? Me, I think everything's just a lie.
02:25I think everything's come from the same wear, same thing.
02:28So you think a lot of the stuff that you're buying from China is replica or they're just the same
02:34stuff?
02:35It's just the same stuff. That's what I think. Because I use it, I see the original, I see the
02:39fake,
02:39and I really don't see a lot of things that are different. You just save more money.
02:44Yeah.
02:45According to sellers, this is the secret to getting cult products at rock bottom prices.
02:50But are they really the same? To find out, I headed to the beauty capital of the country.
02:59If it feels like the beauty industry has exploded overnight, it's because you're right.
03:03The makeup category grew by 12% in 2016, and the $445 billion per year industry is growing at a
03:12steady rate of 3% per year and has proven to be recession-proof. To fulfill the demand,
03:17conglomerates like Estee Lauder and L'Oreal are purchasing indie brands at a record rate.
03:22The result is a palpable demand for expensive luxury beauty products, an atmosphere perfect for
03:28counterfeiting. It's a huge problem and it seems to be getting bigger.
03:31I would compare this industry to, say, a drug trafficking organization. Some of the things,
03:37some of the items we've examined have been found to contain lead, arsenic, mercury, even horse urine.
03:45How are the products getting into the country?
03:47They usually come into our seaport, and then from there, they're offloaded and taken to various
03:52distribution points. We do our investigations, and we work our way back, and for the most part,
03:58it takes us to China. To find out just how easy it is to get the goods in bulk, we
04:05sent an undercover
04:06reporter into a cosmetics market in Guangzhou, a major manufacturing hub in China. Turns out,
04:12it's as easy as walking into the right store, which was the first one we tried.
04:17This is a half stock. Can I see? You need a person of a business?
04:22Well, first, I have to see the quality. Quality is similar to Mac. You can ship to the US? Yes.
04:28You know what they make it with? Like, is it animal fat? Or, you know, is it just like the
04:33real?
04:34Same product? Same ingredients? A little bit different. A little bit different?
04:38They can be the same as the original ones. In China here, famous for coffee. Yeah.
04:43We can make all the same as the original ones. But many customers love it.
04:50Actually, what's inside is very different. The FBI reports that counterfeit cosmetics have been
04:56found to contain dangerous levels of bacteria, and reported reactions include acne, psoriasis,
05:02serious skin rashes, and eye infections. What's more, these reactions can take days to show up,
05:08which means the counterfeit products don't always get the blame they deserve.
05:13Estee Lauder seized over 2.6 million counterfeit Mac products in 2016 alone. Back in New York,
05:20we met with the man in charge of its global security team.
05:23What does the dark underbelly of this look like?
05:26I traveled to China, to Guangzhou, a couple of years ago, and my team took me around to some
05:32of the locations where these products are made. And it's just unsanitary conditions. I mean,
05:38there's no quality control. There's no, well, this doesn't right. Meet the test. Let's take it off
05:43the line. You wouldn't eat there, let alone make products there for distribution.
05:48This is just a taste of the kind of conditions that Estee Lauder's global security team finds when
05:54raiding counterfeit factories both overseas and in the U.S.
06:01MAC has such a massive problem with counterfeiting that they actually have an entire division that's
06:07set up just to try to combat it. And they have a private investigator who sort of heads finding the
06:14people who are selling it on the streets. So we are going to meet with this person now. Go.
06:21I'm driving to New York right now for the first time, so I'm going to try to get us there.
06:28This is Jimmy, Estee Lauder's private investigator. He's the real deal. And not just because people
06:33compare him to Tony Soprano. He's ex-military, served 20 years in the NYPD, and now he's hired by
06:39huge corporations to get knockoffs off the street. He's going to be showing us just how they fight
06:44counterfeiting right here in New York City. A company like Estee Lauder will reach out to me.
06:48They have an anti-counterfeiting program. What we'll do is we'll investigate leads and determine
06:53if they're counterfeit and conduct an investigation and then present it to the police. So I'm going to
06:58guess that you're not on the street buying beauty products from the counterfeiters. I do not think
07:03I'd be effective in my role to buy beauty products. In order to deliver a counterfeiting case
07:09to the police on a silver platter, Estee Lauder does the legwork. For example,
07:14Mac gets tipped off about suspicious products, often by consumers through social media. The global
07:19security team develops the leads, then they often hand them over to a private investigator. A case
07:24is developed using undercover operatives, often criminal justice students who fit an average
07:28buyer's age. Undercover footage seals the deal and the products are inspected by a brand rep who completes
07:34an affidavit that they're counterfeit before it's all turned over to the cops. All this just to
07:39get a single seller off the corner.
07:48Hi. Hi. So Lexi, this is Nancy Gordon with Estee Lauder. Hi. It's so nice to meet you. Nancy is
07:55the
07:55expert in authentication, so she's coming out with us to actually examine the products that we're buying
08:00to confirm that they're counterfeit. They can become agitated. They can become confrontational. They can
08:07escalate it to a physical altercation. So those are all the risks involved in doing an undercover
08:12operation. So they're waiting for us to get there. Okay. And that's when the girls will be waiting for you.
08:19Okay, perfect.
08:25Hello? Okay. So he's set up. Great. All right, we're on the way. So the vendor is on the corner.
08:36Okay. At
08:49the door, he's not in the, he's not hiding at all. He's just right out there. Right out there like
08:53these vendors are on. Yeah.
08:54See, this table is standing right there. I don't want to point to make them down.
09:02All right, listen. I don't know who the undercover is. You're the undercover? Uh-huh.
09:07The girls are going to try to complain if they just act like you're dating their brothers. Okay.
09:11Like you're from college. Okay. Because you're not going to fit here. I'm going to stay here. I can see
09:14them.
09:15Yeah. And we're going to get closer and be careful. If anything happens, I'm supposed to go
09:19into the bank immediately.
09:43That's the Anastasia. I've heard this stuff's really good too.
09:47I like the Mac eyeliner. The Mac is the famous one that people buy.
09:54Three for twenty?
09:57Twenty-five. Three for twenty-five.
09:59How much for just these?
10:03Twenty-five.
10:04Twenty-five?
10:05Yeah.
10:14Twenty-five.
10:15All right, thank you.
10:20Let me see. Maybe I got a one here.
10:23I got the hand wall.
10:32thank you
10:33all right thank you guys so we got all literally they bought all of this stuff
10:38for 120 dollars and this at the store would just be like it would be hundreds of dollars like
10:46easily that's wild i also got a couple things too so now can you tell it's kind of fit yet
10:56oh sure you didn't even open it you just know i didn't need to i can tell by the packaging
11:06nancy what are you thinking about that one
11:09pretty obvious the label take a look at how sheer tone is spelled sheer tion you guys they
11:16spelt tone wrong on the packaging tone t-i-o-n-e is how they spelt it so uh what
11:23is the final
11:24verdict counterfeit all of it so far but i'm sure that they will be what is going to happen to
11:33this
11:33guy well after the police conduct our investigations then and make the determinations of our findings
11:39as what we see here that he is selling counterfeit goods he broke the law so he will be arrested
11:46jimmy was right the new york seller got arrested by nypd using the evidence estee lauder collected
11:52and his goods were seized but he pled down to lesser charges to avoid jail time it's hard not
11:57to think it was all just a drop in the bucket all that work for one tabletop of products so
12:02what's
12:03the long-term solution awareness the consumer must be aware of the counterfeit ingredients of the
12:10products of inferior quality that are out there ultimately if you eliminate the demand you address
12:17the supply some may say that's easier said than done especially when the efficacy of our cosmetics
12:23seem to be growing less valuable than the name on the package so what's more important your skin or the
12:29name printed on your makeup it's just i think the brand the people will just want the brand people just
12:34want the brand it's like a fake Louis Vuitton yeah people just want to carry a fake Louis Vuitton yeah
12:38people just want to carry a fake lipstick that's it
12:47GM &
12:47you