Police raid phony mask makers

Shanghai police have raided eight criminal rings producing and selling counterfeit 3M brand breathing masks this year, local media reported Monday.

Police said they have confiscated more than 46 million yuan ($7.49 million) worth of the phony products, according to a report in the Xinmin Evening News.

Fengxian district police started looking into the phony masks after a 3M products distributor complained earlier this year that the counterfeit products had flooded into the shopping website taobao.com, the report said.

Police identified about 300 stores suspected of selling phony 3M masks. The stores sold the 8210 type of 3M masks for 1.4 yuan to 3 yuan each. This type of mask has been a popular item because it can filter out a dangerous kind of pollutants known as PM 2.5. The official 3M store on tmall.com sells the same type of mask for about 9 yuan.

Police purchased 30 masks from seven online stores and sent them to 3M for testing, the report said. The company found that the masks were all counterfeits. Working with 3M's anti-counterfeit products team, police found 18 locations where the phony masks were being produced, stored or sold. On May 22, police dispatched more than 240 officers to nine provinces to raid the illicit operations, the report said. They confiscated about 900,000 phony masks in the raids.

It should cost at least 5 yuan to buy a breathing mask that can filter PM 2.5 out of the air, said Wang Jian, director of the respiration department of the Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital. "It is highly unlikely that a genuine mask can cost as little as 2 yuan," Wang told the Global Times.

Wang said that it could be more harmful to wear the phony mask than breathing without protection on a polluted day. "Phony masks that have not been inspected by health authorities can cause allergic reactions," she said.

3M advised consumers to use the prices from its official store as a guide when purchasing a particular type of mask, a company press officer said.

Taobao.com has been cooperating with the police investigation since March, said Zhang Lei, a press officer from Alibaba Group, Taobao's parent company.

Nonetheless, the 8210 type of 3M mask was still for sale Monday at stores on taobao.com for as little as 1.4 yuan.

Zhang said that taobao.com will comply with any police orders to close down problematic stores.