Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) reached a settlement with two influencers after it sued them and several sellers last November for allegedly peddling counterfeit luxury goods on Instagram and TikTok, the company announced Thursday.
Amazon declined to disclose financial terms of the settlement. As part of the agreement, the influencers, Kelly Fitzpatrick and Sabrina Kelly-Krejci, will be barred from marketing, advertising, linking to, promoting or selling any products on Amazon.
Additionally, Amazon will donate proceeds from the settlement to charities, including a consumer awareness campaign overseen by the International Trademark Association, of which Amazon is a corporate member.
Counterfeits are a longstanding issue on Amazon’s third-party marketplace. The marketplace, launched in 2000, is made up of millions of third-party sellers and now accounts for more than half of Amazon’s overall e-commerce sales. While it remains a critical component of Amazon’s business, counterfeits, unsafe products and even expired goods have become a notorious problem and attracted scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators.
Amazon has stepped up its efforts to curb counterfeits. The company has pursued counterfeiters in court, launched several programs to identify sales of counterfeit goods and rolled out the Counterfeit Crimes Unit, made up of former federal prosecutors, investigators and data analysts, to mine the site for fraudulent activity.
As Fitzpatrick and Kelly-Krejci’s case illustrated, detecting fakes can prove to be more challenging when the activity occurs both on and off of Amazon.
AMZN shares leaped $8.33 to $3,309.45
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