Key takeaways
- Amazon identified, seized, and disposed of more than 15 million counterfeit products globally in 2025.
- The Counterfeit Crimes Unit has pursued more than 32,000 bad actors across 14 countries since 2020.
- Amazon’s report does not disclose how many counterfeits reached consumers before enforcement, leaving brand teams to close the visibility gap independently.
What Amazon Trustworthy Shopping Experience Report Discloses about 2025
Amazon’s first Trustworthy Shopping Experience Report* discloses that the company identified, seized, and disposed of more than 15 million counterfeit products globally in 2025. Its Counterfeit Crimes Unit has pursued more than 32,000 bad actors through litigation and criminal referrals across 14 countries since 2020. The report broadens Amazon’s trust framework to cover organised retail crime, product safety, scam prevention, and trustworthy reviews alongside anti-counterfeiting — a signal that the problem extends well beyond individual listings.
The critical detail Amazon does not disclose: how many of those 15 million units reached a consumer before enforcement intervened. The report emphasises predictive interception — listings blocked before products reach the catalogue, in some cases before brands have even shared their IP. But the same report acknowledges threat actors are “constantly evolving,” and any unit that ships before it is caught generates the same downstream consequences for the brand.
Why the 15 Million Counterfeit Figure Matters for Brand Owners
When counterfeit goods reach consumers before platform enforcement intervenes, brands absorb the consequences — negative reviews, product safety complaints, and pricing erosion — regardless of whether Amazon later removes the listing. The damage is not reversed by retrospective enforcement.
Operationally, Amazon’s enforcement architecture combines proactive detection and reactive removal across its own catalogue. What it does not do — and what Amazon’s report does not claim it does — is provide real-time, brand-specific alerting to your internal team about which 3P sellers are listing on your ASINs, with what pricing, and what risk profile. That visibility gap is the brand team’s to close independently.
Strategically, the scale of Amazon’s own data — 15 million units intercepted in a single year — confirms that the underlying threat volume is significant and persistent. For any brand with material Amazon exposure, independent monitoring running in parallel with Amazon’s systems is not a supplement; it is a requirement.
The commercial consequence of inaction compounds over time. Every counterfeit listing that reaches a consumer before it is caught suppresses Buy Box performance, erodes average selling price, and damages the conversion rate on a brand’s own listings. In one GreyScout deployment, a brand recorded a 260% improvement in Buy Box share on priority SKUs after deploying continuous 3P seller monitoring and enforcement.
How Brand Protection Teams Close the Visibility Gap
Brand protection teams typically address the retrospective enforcement gap by layering continuous, independent marketplace monitoring across their key ASINs and seller accounts — identifying unverified seller activity before goods ship rather than after they have been reviewed.
GreyScout enables this through real-time monitoring across Amazon and other marketplaces, surfacing 3P seller accounts and listing anomalies that precede platform enforcement action. Evidence packages generated support both takedown submissions and, where needed, escalated legal referrals.
For teams assessing their Amazon brand protection posture, understanding which sellers are active on your listings today is the starting point. Check out case studies which detail how this operates in practice on Amazon.
