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Think of Trading Standards and quite often you can imagine inspectors turning up at market stalls looking for dodgy items.

But in an era of online selling, Trading Standards officers from Caerphilly County Borough Council are now patrolling virtual market spaces as well as physical ones.

Under current regulations, people who are admins of buy and sell groups on social media can be held personally liable for the selling of bogus goods by others.

Through the guidance of a national scheme, Trading Standards staff are contacting the admins of buy-and-sell groups to remind them of their responsibilities to counteract the flood of fake online goods that can usually come in the run-up to Christmas.

Officers will invite the admins to follow the ‘Real Deal Online Code of Practice’.

Project lead Lauren Phillips, from Caerphilly Trading Standards, explained: “Running a Facebook group is no different to running a market. You have a responsibility to make sure the goods sold are safe and legitimate.”

She added: “Christmas is when we are at our busiest. Although it’s not seasonal and it’s 12 months a year, this is when the biggest opportunists come out of the woodwork wanting to take advantage of people who may not be able to afford legitimate products.

“People don’t often understand where counterfeit products come from. Electrical products, for example, don’t go through the testing that’s required. Fake Apple chargers or Airpods – how do you know your house isn’t going to catch fire?”

The Real Deal Code of Practice requires group admins to welcome Trading Standards officers as members of the group and to agree to five principles.

1. To prohibit the sale of counterfeit and other illicit goods.
2. To act on information from intellectual property rights owners and their representatives who highlight the sale of illegal goods.
3. To notify trading standards if they believe that illegal goods are being sold within the group and to exclude the sellers of these goods.
4. To highlight warnings and advice notices posted by trading standards.
5. To make sure that all members of the group are aware of its fake-free policy.

Lauren said enforcing the code is more about education than prosecution.

She said: “We are not the baddies. We are not here because we want to send someone to jail. The first port of call would be talking and asking them politely, but if they carried on offending then we would look at enforcement.”

However, that doesn’t mean that serious criminals get a free pass.

Lauren concluded: “If we were to come across someone who really concerned us, someone who I thought was a leader in an organised crime gang, that would be a different story.”