THE SCOOP ON FAKE SNEAKERS

What about eBay? We've just looked at Jordans, for example and our educated guess was that probably 90-95% were fake. That's a staggering statistic, really. What's your opinion?

I reckon that's conservative - 98% of them are fake. It's the same people who run the websites. eBay has the capacity to take down these sites and, contrary to what everyone says, my personal view is that eBay does what it can do to a large extent. The way I explain it is that eBay simply provides the blank space for a person to sell their wares just like a shopping centre leases out a tenancy to a retail shop. Through their registration process, they have the seller undertake not to commit any crimes when they sell stuff on eBay. I think if eBay were to be held responsible for everything that was being sold by every individual they'd need a security team of 10,000 people, and even that probably wouldn't be enough.

Do you have any correspondence with them regarding your activities?

We advise eBay when we've identified a counterfeit site which they then take down for us. But, of course - because of the registration process - that person could reappear 10 minutes later. So, it's the wrong way to tackle the problem. We're never going to fix the eBay problem by trying to bring down the sites. The only way we'll ever realistically do this is by convincing the consumers that they're not going to get a legitimate deal on eBay. Do your homework. Check the feedback. Bear in mind that 95% of the feedback is probably entered by themselves with 10 of their different hotmail addresses. Pay particular attention to the negative feedback because that's probably the only thing that is real. Have a look at the other items that the seller has to sell and ask yourself realistically whether Joe Citizen would have this range of products to sell. The internet seems to garner this confidence with people that exists in no other part of our life.