Where To Report Pirated Goods

Try Sở Y Tế (Department of Health), 59 Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai, P Bến Thành, Q1, ask to see a thanh tra dược (pharmaceutical inspector) to report thuốc hóa giả (counterfeit medicines).

On the heels of the conviction of VN Pharma's former Deputy Director et al. on manufacturing and trading counterfeit cancer medicine, plus bribing to avoid legal punishment, your report may receive some attention from the inspector.

Thank you, I'll look them up, maybe I can find a phone number or an email address to speed it up.

wildwildwest wrote:

I'll look them up, maybe I can find a phone number or an email address to speed it up.

Are you in Saigon now?  In person is the best way to speed things up in Vietnam.

Yeah, well called a few numbers, all of them were busy or not picking up. But we found an email address, and will pursue it that way first:

bbt.syt@tphcm.gov.vn

They have on online presence here:

http://www.medinet.hochiminhcity.gov.vn/Default.aspx

Will consider going to the physical location if absolutely necessary, but if this goes nowhere might just forward the info we got to various press agencies, might get further that way.

wildwildwest wrote:

I tried posting a question about this on r/Vietnam but the shills running the sub auto-blocked the question (it's now a very controlled forum, it was taken over by 50 cents a few years ago).

Do you have a source for the allegation that the Reddit moderators of r/Vietnam are corrupt?

Seems like a Chinese propagandist would love to reveal drug counterfeiting in Vietnam.

gobot wrote:

Seems like a Chinese propagandist would love to reveal drug counterfeiting in Vietnam.

LOL...the goods are most likely Chinese counterfeits, as the shipping time was on par with that. Getting stuff from Australia and other Western countries normally takes weeks + time to go through customs unless you pay a heavy courier fee. The seller said she was importing, so it's not likely Vietnamese goods unless she's lying about that, which I have no indication to believe.

Reddit is a shithole, it was a scam from the start, they eventually became a replacement for Digg when the trolls overtook it. The thing about Reddit is that even the founders have admitted they used fake accounts to start it. It's notoriously corrupt from the top down and well overrun with bots, astroturfers, and special interest group teams, particularly, Chinese and American disinformationists. I'm surprised the site's not banned here. /r/Vietnam was mostly expats, and recently got flooded with CCP nationalists a while back and hasn't ever been the same since. The original moderator of /r/Vietnam is inactive (and his account, likely hacked), a lot of subreddits like these have been commandeered by sub-management teams doing PR contracting for foreign agencies.

Anyways, they have now enabled the post hours after, so they must have been be following this thread and decided they didn't want to look bad.

wildwildwest wrote:

Reddit is a shithole ... blah blah blah ... scam ... trolls ...  fake ...  corrupt...  bots ... astroturfers ... disinformationists [??]

Ok fine. I don't know why you even posted there, knowing all these dangers. 

Well I like Reddit. There are tons of groups and enthusiasts in so many different topics. Not hard to sort out bias. It skews to mostly young people, that's ok with me, and leftist on political groups, easy to avoid. The Vietnam threads I see are mostly photos of random places, or tourist questions. No controversy.

wildwildwest wrote:

Anyways, they have now enabled the post hours after, so they must have been be following this thread and decided they didn't want to look bad.

That makes sense. The Chinese government is tracking this red hot exposé, on old-people's expat.com, and bat-signaled their secret cell at Reddit to green-light your post. 

gobot wrote:

Ok fine. I don't know why you even posted there, knowing all these dangers. 

That's standard fair for most forums in Asia, and anything run by mainstream media corporations, which Reddit is part of (a big MSM conglomerate, Conde Naste being a parent corporation, also recently bought into by China).

gobot wrote:

Well I like Reddit. There are tons of groups and enthusiasts in so many different topics. Not hard to sort out bias. It skews to mostly young people, that's ok with me, and leftist on political groups, easy to avoid. The Vietnam threads I see are mostly photos of random places, or tourist questions. No controversy

Because most of the threads that are controversial never show up. That wasn't the case a few years ago, before new management showed up. Try posting anything vaguely anti-CCP and see if it's visible outside of your account. Generally they auto-shadowban certain keywords and then perhaps enable them later if they so wish.

gobot wrote:

That makes sense. The Chinese government is tracking this red hot exposé, on old-people's expat.com, and bat-signaled their secret cell at Reddit to green-light your post. 

If you want me to go more in-depth, I can, but in summary basically it's an extension of the great firewall of China which is being expanded to Vietnam and other participant nations. It's also tied in with carbon-copy legislation where possible. I've looked over the bills in English.

Any website that is visible in Vietnam has to go through that firewall, including this forum we're using right now.

Oh, and an update to this thread, I got a refund on the goods which were pirated, but not before I forwarded essential evidence to the relevant authorities. They will deal with it when they have the time, if they so choose. It's in their hands now.

wildwildwest wrote:

Oh, and an update to this thread, I got a refund on the goods which were pirated, but not before I forwarded essential evidence to the relevant authorities.

At least you won the battle, if not the war.  Did the authorities make them refund your money or did you do it yourself?

Ciambella wrote:

wildwildwest wrote:

Oh, and an update to this thread, I got a refund on the goods which were pirated, but not before I forwarded essential evidence to the relevant authorities.

At least you won the battle, if not the war.  Did the authorities make them refund your money or did you do it yourself?

I had a person intervene. It's just a battle. I don't think the retailer wants to worry about small $$$ when she can continue doing what she's doing until told otherwise. Hopefully she will not pay a bribe to do that, but will legitimize things.

Until that happens, anyone else is at risk to purchase fake goods again. Do your research guys, and if possible, inspect the goods before paying the fee, because it will save you this whole rigmarole.

Legitimate goods are becoming more commonplace here, but at the same time, there are some high-quality counterfeits being made, some even locally. I don't know if these are Chinese counterfeiters working locally or just some locals, but at any rate, the government does regularly crackdown on such guys from time to time.

We should regularly report any pirated goods for the sake of the integrity of the market here.

Ciambella wrote:

Try Sở Y Tế (Department of Health), 59 Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai, P Bến Thành, Q1, ask to see a thanh tra dược (pharmaceutical inspector) to report thuốc hóa giả (counterfeit medicines).

On the heels of the conviction of VN Pharma's former Deputy Director et al. on manufacturing and trading counterfeit cancer medicine, plus bribing to avoid legal punishment, your report may receive some attention from the inspector.

This is manslaughter and they got off too lightly. They deserve nothing less than a death sentence . All those desperate people who died earlier as a result of taking their fake medicine.

My NHS nurse warned me about fake meds going around but I didn't expect a scandal that big. My brother passed away from cancer.

Yeah, either in the case of the medicine being ineffective, dangerous, or discarded, their victim isn't properly treated, and sickness is prolonged, perhaps until death in some cases.

The love of money is the root of all evil. Most corruption can be traced back to this. Hence why people need good moral education.