Physical Wellness

Chinese Police Discover, Confiscate 4.7 Million Fake Durex Condoms

By Makini Brice | Update Date: May 15, 2013 11:40 PM EDT

Many people have reported about fake Apple products and falsified Louis Vuitton handbags made in China. A recent bust adds a surprising name to that list. Fake Durex condoms, along with counterfeit Contex and Jissbon condoms, were recently discovered by police. According to recent reports, police confiscated about 4.7 million condoms.

According to ABC News, the police have arrested 37 people in the Fujian, Henan and Zhejiang provinces as suspects in the case. One of them, with the surname Liu, is believed to be one of the ring's leaders. Reports state that he started the factory in December, commencing his operations by buying raw latex and wrappers with the more established companies' logos on them. Then employees were put to work applying cheap lubricant to the latex and stuffing them in wrappers and boxes with the logos. The employees were able to package 20,000 condoms a day.

The ring was discovered by a police officer who stumbled upon the condoms on Taobao, an online shopping center that has been compared to Amazon. At 16 yuan, or $1, the police officer was suspicious at the ridiculously low price of the name-brand contraceptives. Business Insider reports that, because of the cheap price of the condom production, costing the factory just 0.17 yuan to produce, the gang was able to make 260,000 yuan from each day's haul.

Police then sleuthed from the website to the factory, where the employees were found applying the lubricant. Police found 4.65 million condoms that had already been packaged in the factory, as well as 1,100 pounds of condoms that had not been packaged on the premises. Mr. Liu told police that the condoms had been sold online and via small vendors, chiefly markets, drugstores and sex toy stores in rural areas.

It is not clear whether the condoms were found to be faulty, though previous counterfeit condoms have provided health scares in the past. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the west African country found 1 million fake condoms, all imported from China. "When we tested those condoms, we found that they are poor quality, can burst in the course of sexual activity, and have holes which expose the users to unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease," Thomas Amedzra, the head of drug enforcement at Ghana's Food and Drug Authority, said to the Guardian at the time.

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