MURFREESBORO, TN – Selling counterfeit goods is never a good thing, especially for the unsuspecting victim who unknowingly buys a knock-off. However, the internet seems to be a hot spot for con-artists to congregate. What may surprise you is that more and more counterfeit apparel is now being pushed at the local level on popular social media pages like Facebook Marketplace.
To give you a better idea of how prevalent counterfeit goods are in our area, one WGNS listener contacted the station after buying a pair of women’s On Cloud “Cloudnova 2” running shoes that she found locally. The victim, whom we’ll call “Sneaker Seeker,” said the shoes were advertised as a brand new “Christmas gift that didn’t fit.” Thinking she found a deal on someone’s Christmas shoes - - a month after the holidays, the woman negotiated the price down to $80 before heading to the subject’s home to pick up the kicks.
As the scene unfolded like a low-budget thriller, Mrs. Sneaker Seeker made her way to the culprit's home near Walmart on Joe B. Jackson Parkway in Murfreesboro. The woman told WGNS she inhaled a significant whiff of marijuana that overwhelmed her sinuses as she pulled into the suspect’s driveway. Adding to that level of excitement, the seller walked outside to meet our brave Sneaker Seeker before she even had a chance to put her car in park. This maneuver allowed the seller to avoid an in-depth interaction with the buyer, likely speeding up the transaction.
After paying for the new shoes, the woman headed home. Once at her residence, she realized the odors she encountered in the seller's driveway had followed her, as they hitched a ride on her shiny new shoes. However, it wasn’t skunk like smell that bothered her; it was the realization that her name-brand On Cloud shoes were counterfeit.
Our thrifty shopper spotted the glaring red flags waving majestically in the wind, all of which she pointed out to her husband and later to WGNS. First, there were the “subtle differences” between her sneakers and the perfectly curated images found online. One of those differences were the shades of white and tones of copper that adorned the kicks. Sneaker Seeker also noted the seams on the shoe had an overabundance of glue on them, but the real McCoy’s didn’t. To add insult to injury, it also appeared that the seller received more than one pair of wrong fitting kicks, because instead of marking the shoes as “SOLD” on Facebook Marketplace, the seller relisted them.
The proliferation of counterfeit apparel has made local Facebook pages a playground for con-artists eager to cash in. That said, buyers beware of fantastic deals that sound too good to be true—especially if they come wrapped in a haze of suspicious smoke.
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