of inspected items confirmed counterfeit
◆ CASE STUDY — CONSUMER HEALTH
From customer complaint to factory raid.
How Alliance Pharma traced counterfeits of one of its consumer health brands back to its source.
BRAND OWNERAlliance Pharma
CHANNELOnline marketplaces
ENFORCEMENTXi’an · Henan, China
PERIODMarch 2024 — July 2026
counterfeit units seized across two raids
enforcement actions: distribution, then manufacturing
packaging changes required
01 — THE SIGNAL
It started with a complaint.
The first sign was not a seizure, an audit or a regulatory alert. It was a customer.
In March 2024, Alliance Pharma began receiving complaints and product reclamations relating to one of its consumer health brands purchased through online marketplaces. Individually, each complaint looked like an isolated quality issue. Collectively, they were something else: the visible edge of an organised counterfeiting operation running through third-party marketplace sellers.
This is the position most brand protection teams find themselves in. Complaints arrive as anecdotes. They are handled as customer service events rather than intelligence, and the pattern that connects them stays invisible. The question is never simply whether one pack is genuine. It is whether the complaints share a common source, and whether that source can be found.
What the inspections revealed.
As complaint samples and test purchases were routed through TrueMed for analysis, the scale of the problem became measurable. A handful of confirmed fakes suggests opportunistic resellers. Nearly three in five suggests continuous supply from a dedicated production capability — enough volume and consistency to keep marketplace listings stocked. It moved the case from customer service into enforcement.
02 — THE METHOD
Authentication that required nothing to be added.
The brand was already in the market, already in consumers’ hands and already sitting in marketplace warehouses when the first counterfeits appeared. Adding a hologram, a security label or a new code to future production would have done nothing for any of it.
This is the structural limitation of additive security. It only protects what has not been made yet, it takes months or years to reach the shelf, and every feature added to genuine packaging becomes a specification counterfeiters can study and reproduce.
TrueMed’s approach is non-additive. Nothing is applied to the product or the packaging. Machine learning models analyze the physical characteristics that a genuine manufacturing process produces and a counterfeit one cannot reliably reproduce. Because the analysis works from digital images, it works on product already in circulation — including the photographs customers send in with their complaints and the test purchases investigators make from suspect sellers.
In this case, the complaints Alliance Pharma had already received could be turned into structured evidence, without waiting for a packaging change and without asking customers to do anything they were not already doing.
- Dimensional accuracy
- Color values
- Typography and character placement
- Gradients and vector artwork
- Print quality at sub-visible resolution
No hologram.
No QR code.
No serialisation.
No chemical marker.
No change to the manufacturing line.
No QR code.
No serialisation.
No chemical marker.
No change to the manufacturing line.
”
Our customers gave us the first signal, but a complaint on its own is an anecdote. What changed the case was being able to authenticate the product behind each complaint to an evidential standard, and then follow that evidence upstream. Taking down the distributor mattered. Reaching the people manufacturing it mattered more.
03 — THE CASE, IN SEQUENCE
Following the evidence upstream.
Confirming that a product is counterfeit is where most authentication stops. It is where an investigation begins. Rather than treating each seller as a separate problem, inspectors worked outwards from confirmed fakes towards the sellers supplying them — and then towards the people supplying those.
Complaints begin
Complaints and reclamations arrive on a consumer health brand sold through online marketplaces.
Complaints become evidence
Samples and test purchases analyzed by TrueMed; 57% of inspected items confirmed counterfeit.
Distribution mapped
Further cases identified across key e-commerce platforms; test purchases map the network.
Xi’an, China raid
Factory and office raided. Computers, machinery and 20,000+ counterfeit items seized.
Upstream investigation
A Henan, China network producing and distributing counterfeit product identified; criminal case opened.
Henan, China raid
Manufacturing site, warehouse and office raided. Suspects detained; 10,000+ further items seized.
04 — WHAT THE CASE DEMONSTRATES
Three things worth drawing out.
Complaints are intelligence, if you can read them.
Alliance Pharma’s earliest and best signal came from its own customers. What made that signal usable was the ability to authenticate the products behind the complaints reliably enough to treat the results as evidence rather than opinion. Human visual inspection cannot do this at scale or with consistency, particularly on counterfeits produced to a high standard.
Authentication is only valuable if it feeds enforcement.
A verdict on a single pack protects a single customer. A body of consistent verdicts, held together with a documented chain of custody, is what allows investigators to identify sellers, work upstream to suppliers, and build a case a prosecutor will accept. The value is in the accumulation, not the individual scan.
Going upstream is what changes the outcome.
The Xi’an, China raid removed 20,000 counterfeit items. The Henan, China raid, six months later, reached the network that made them. Enforcement that stops at the marketplace listing removes symptoms. Enforcement that follows the evidence to the production site removes capability.
The clock is the variable.
A counterfeit line does not pause while a brand decides whether its complaints add up to something. The slow step is rarely the enforcement — it is the interval between the first complaint and the first defensible verdict. Non-additive authentication compresses that interval, because it needs an image rather than a physical sample, and it works on product already in the market.
“Speed decides the outcome. Every week a counterfeit line keeps running is more product reaching consumers, so the question is how quickly you can turn scattered complaints into evidence an investigator can act on.”
Rhodri Smith — Alliance Pharmaceuticals
FACING THE SAME PROBLEM?
Authenticate what is already in the market.
TrueMed works with pharmaceutical companies, regulators, customs and enforcement agencies and brand protection teams to authenticate product without adding anything to it.