A police raid on a beauty outlet south Phuket Town yesterday morning netted an estimated THB5 million (US$158,000) in fake beauty creams and several suspects for selling the counterfeit goods.
Officers from the Border Patrol Police 425 unit raided the Panda Beauty store near the near the Weekend Market at 10:30am yesterday, following a complaint from the company who invented the creams.
At the scene, the officers found hundreds of boxes of beauty creams, featuring the brand name Rayanskin, specifically the “Ray Facial Mask” and “Ray Facial Gold Mask” products.
Jarin Cheyong, a lawyer representing Rayanskin International Co. Ltd., explained that Rayanskin had specifically discontinued producing those products due the scale of fake merchandise being produced to illegally lure customers to buy the inferior products.
“Rayanskin stopped producing ‘Ray Facial Mask’ and ‘Ray Facial Gold Mask’ because there are a lot of copies,” Jarin said.
“We were afraid that customers might misunderstand that the fake products were actually the genuine products and that people might be affected by the chemicals in the fake products,” he explained.
Other plain evidence proving the products were fake were discovered on the boxes themselves, which were missing elements that are included on the genuine products, The Phuket News was told.
“The shop owner will be charged for breaches of the both Cosmetic Act and the Consumer Protection Act for selling unregistered, unlabelled cosmetics and selling counterfeit goods,” said Pol. Capt. Teerasak Narasai, who led the raid.
“The maximum penalty is a fine of up to THB400,000 or up to four years in jail, or both,” he noted.
At the scene, officers also found the certificate of incorporation for Panda International Co. Ltd., which is the operating company for the shop.
Several suspects were taken into custody during the raid, but the number of people and what positions they held in serving the company were not revealed.
“All of the suspects were taken to Wichit Police Station for more investigation,” Capt. Teerasak said.
Story: The Phuket News
