The new scam: fake brands, fake papers, real losses.
A Toronto buyer paid $250,000 for fake Ralph Lauren with an official-looking release letter. Here is how the scam works — and how to check any broker before you pay.
Every importer who buys from Bangladesh has a burn story. Ours cross our trade desk every month — and the newest one is the most convincing scam we have seen in twenty years. It cost one Toronto buyer a quarter of a million dollars, and he still does not fully believe it happened.
The Toronto buyer: $10 a piece, 25,000 pieces, two years stuck
He bought Ralph Lauren shirts — 25,000 pieces at US $10 each — imported them to Canada, and could not sell them. After two years sitting on the stock he offered the lot on our site. We told him right away: the goods were fake. He refused to believe it — and sent us his proof: a letter from the exporter stating the goods were “released to sell.”
The ‘release letter’ scam
This is the new play, and it is high level. The exporter — sometimes a real registered company — issues a signed declaration that the goods were “legally released from the original brand order.” It looks official. It is worthless. A brand release can only come from the brand’s head office — not from an exporter, not even from the factory that sewed the garments. Anyone can print a letter about someone else’s trademark; only the trademark owner can release it.
“A release letter from an exporter is not a release. Only the brand’s head office can release its own label.”
How good the fakes are
We sent the buyer photos of the identical ‘Ralph Lauren’ deal — and more — from the same factories that make fake goods. He went silent. The copies are near-perfect in every respect: factory owners go sample-shopping in Singapore, or someone in the USA couriers them originals to copy. They match the exact colours from Ralph Lauren’s website for that season. They copy the washcare labels. The pony logo is embroidered in a proper mill. Hangtags, QR codes, price tickets — all reproduced. What they never match is the quality, the spec, or the fabric.
The size trap nobody mentions
One more thing we told him: his goods were not even US spec. Fakes are cut to Asian spec — a Large fits like a Small, if you are lucky. The broker sends one sample that fits, then ships a container of Asian-spec sizes. Even a buyer who ignores the trademark problem is left with shirts his customers cannot wear.
The truth about brand release from Bangladesh
In twenty years on this floor we have not found a single genuine brand release from Bangladesh. Not one. If you are connected directly to the mill you can get authentic surplus goods — but with no release to sell the label. The one real exception today: Primark allows release to wholesalers from its Bangladesh mills — at a premium price, and the quality is still Primark. You are usually better off buying the same grade for less, changing the label, and delivering to your customers under your own name.
Where Bangladesh deals genuinely win
This is the honest verdict: good-to-premium everyday wear. Brand-grade fabric and make, deep off-price, professionally relabeled, shelf-ready. That Toronto buyer paid $10 for shirts that sell in Bangladesh’s local market for $3 at most — while real stocklot, honestly bought and honestly papered, would have cost him less and sold through.
The broker checklist — before you send a dollar
Brokers are masterpieces of big talk. Check them like this: 1) Verify the company in the government’s online registry — not a website or a Facebook page, that is nothing. 2) Ask for 2–3 real references — buyers they have actually shipped to. 3) CALL those references. 4) When you call, make sure you are not calling his cousin abroad — ask questions only a real customer could answer: what styles, what quantities, which port, which season. 5) If anyone shows you a brand ‘release’ that did not come from the brand’s head office, walk away — you are looking at this scam.
The buyer in Toronto is still stuck with his 25,000 shirts. Do not be him. If a Bangladesh deal looks too good and comes with a release letter, send it to us before you pay — we will tell you in one look what it really is.