SINGAPORE, Oct 26 — Despite finding out from a distributor that the thermometers she was reselling may not be authentic, Lau Xiao Ling continued advertising them on various online platforms until the authorities raided her home.
Lau earned about S$20,000 (RM94,636) in profits from selling these counterfeit thermometers and ear probes from 2019 to 2021.
The 34-year-old Singaporean was sentenced to three weeks’ jail yesterday (October 25). She pleaded guilty to selling goods with a falsely applied trademark under the Trade Marks Act, with another charge taken into consideration for sentencing.
The court heard that Lau ran accounts on e-retail platforms Shopee, Lazada, Carousell, Qoo10 and Supermom. She sold assorted items to customers to supplement her personal income.
In June 2019, she bought a Braun Thermoscan 7 Model IRT6520 thermometer from a Qoo10 seller for S$49.90 for her personal use.
Satisfied with the product, she then listed the same thermometer model for sale, buying them for S$55 each from the same Qoo10 seller whenever she received an order. She then resold them for about S$64 to S$78 each.
A genuine thermometer costs between S$135 and S$169 at official retailers such as NTUC FairPrice supermarkets, Courts and Watsons stores here.
In 2020, Lau approached the Braun distributor in Singapore when a customer asked about the authenticity of the thermometers she was selling.
The distributor told Lau that the serial number she provided was from a thermometer not sold by an authorised dealer here. However, she did not take further steps to verify its authenticity.
In February 2021, she then decided to buy the thermometers online in bulk to resell because sales were good. She turned to the same Qoo10 seller, whom she knew was based in China.
The seller agreed to sell the thermometers to Lau at a discounted price of S$52 each, with the accompanying ear probes priced at S$2.33 a box.
Lau then sold the thermometers for about S$68 each and the ear probes at about S$5 a box, receiving around S$13 in profits for the thermometers after deducting delivery and commission fees.
She sold 30 to 100 of them every month.
From March to October 2021, she received at least six complaints from customers who got inaccurate temperature readings.
A customer also said the Braun service centre had informed her that the thermometer was not a set distributed in Singapore. Lau did not further verify the authenticity and falsely assumed they were genuine export sets, the court heard.
Police officers from the Criminal Investigation Department’s Intellectual Property Rights Branch then raided Lau’s home on November 26, 2021. They seized 186 thermometers and 124 boxes of ear probes, all of which were counterfeit.
The prosecution said that Lau has disgorged (released) her profits of S$20,000, with the sum to be forfeited to the state.
Lau could have been fined up to S$100,000 or jailed up to five years, or punished with both. ― TODAY
