If you’ve tried shopping on Amazon or through Instagram ads, you've probably encountered a mix of brands you haven’t heard of.

Between the reputable and the counterfeits is a sea of mysterious companies selling goods of unknown origin and quality. wapo.st/3uLJqrB
The burden falls on shoppers to tell the good from the bad.

Some of the brands are genuine gets. The rest are a mixed bag of hustles — either poorly cloned products or orders shipped directly from subpar overseas manufacturers. wapo.st/3uLJqrB
Reviews on shopping sites are regularly gamed by sellers.

Shoppers have to look for subtle signs, like too many reviews that are overly positive or use repetitive language — or a stolen product photo. wapo.st/3uLJqrB
Tech companies like Amazon are vocal about their efforts to crack down on obvious counterfeit products.

But most efforts are directed at luxury goods or items protected by patents. The remaining products are largely left alone. wapo.st/3uLJqrB
Buying products online requires a whole new set of skills, like conducting a reverse image search or being able to tell the difference between real reviews and paid ones.

Here’s how to spot red flags that a brand isn’t what it says it is. washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

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More from @washingtonpost

7 Oct
A bipartisan group of lawmakers plans to introduce legislation that for the first time would require trust companies, lawyers, art dealers and others to investigate foreign clients seeking to move money and assets into the American financial system. wapo.st/3Anji7H
The bill’s sponsors cited the findings of the #PandoraPapers investigation, the result of a sweeping international collaboration published this week that exposed how the global elite conceal their wealth in tax havens that increasingly include the U.S. wapo.st/3Anji7H
Stories by The Post and @ICIJorg showed that little-known trust companies in Sioux Falls, S.D., established nearly 30 trusts holding assets connected to people or companies accused of corruption, human rights abuses or other wrongdoing in some of the world’s poorest communities.
Read 6 tweets
6 Oct
While cash may be the traditional means of providing untraceable gifts to politicians, the very wealthy often turn instead to the offshore world to produce an alternative currency: companies registered in secrecy havens and stuffed with valuable assets. wapo.st/3oGHCPE
The world’s wealthiest are among the most avid users of offshore companies, a new cache of documents known as the #PandoraPapers shows, and they turn to tax havens for a variety of reasons. wapo.st/3oGHCPE
The documents obtained by @ICIJorg and shared with The Washington Post and journalists in 117 countries and territories around the world shed light on how the world’s wealthy use offshore companies to conduct business. wapo.st/3oGHCPE
Read 8 tweets
5 Oct
For decades, Douglas Latchford cut a romantic figure: The genial Englishman was an explorer of jungle temples, a scholar and a connoisseur seduced by the exquisite details of ancient sculpture. washingtonpost.com/world/interact…
Beginning in the 1970s, he amassed one of the world’s largest private collections of Khmer treasures, mostly Hindu and Buddhist sculptures, the remains of a civilization that flourished in Southeast Asia a thousand years ago. washingtonpost.com/world/interact…
While Latchford professed reverence for Khmer achievements, he was also trafficking in and profiting from antiquities pillaged from that civilization’s sacred temples, according to U.S. prosecutors, part of a decades-long ransacking of Cambodian sites. washingtonpost.com/world/interact…
Read 7 tweets
4 Oct
Documents in a massive trove of financial records, known as the #PandoraPapers, show how sanctions afflict Putin insiders — and how far they go to evade them. wapo.st/2WKF5sk
Over the past seven years, the U.S. and Europe have imposed sanctions on more than 800 Russian individuals and entities for alleged “malign” behavior including annexation of Crimea, cyberattacks on Western institutions and disruptions of U.S. elections. wapo.st/2WKF5sk
The Pandora files show sanctions not only hitting their Russian targets but then triggering losses that spread across their interconnected financial networks. wapo.st/2WKF5sk
Read 5 tweets
4 Oct
An alleged murderer, a mob associate and a child sex offender protected their U.S. wealth in Belize tax haven.

All were identified by The Post and @ICIJorg through one of the largest-ever troves of secret financial documents, known as the #PandoraPapers. wapo.st/3a6rjmQ
The documents expose how a prolific offshore operator in Belize accepted and served suspect American clients by setting up trusts and shell companies. wapo.st/3a6rjmQ
Efforts to find and seize assets sheltered abroad are often hamstrung by uncooperative providers of offshore services, and by treaties on information-sharing that can produce outdated or limited information, according to a dozen former prosecutors and investigators. "The systems that are in place are not designed to stop
Read 4 tweets
4 Oct
A burgeoning American trust industry is increasingly sheltering the assets of international millionaires and billionaires by promising levels of protection and secrecy that rival or surpass those offered in overseas tax havens. washingtonpost.com/business/inter…
That shield, which is near-absolute, has insulated the industry from meaningful oversight and allowed it to forge new footholds in U.S. states. wapo.st/3Dc9Zta
The Post and @ICIJorg gained an unprecedented look into the money flowing into trusts in the U.S. by examining a trove of more than 11.9 million confidential documents maintained by trust and corporate services providers around the world. wapo.st/3Dc9Zta
Read 5 tweets

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