Inside the shadowy, lucrative business of 'superfake' luxury handbags

Counterfeiters take your order through encrypted services, give real-time customer service and deliver the goods to your door in a branded box

- Carol Ryan

Sandor Walkup was waiting for a table at an expensive restaurant in Charlotte, N.C., when he noticed a woman checking out his Himalayan Birkin. It is a rare crocodile-skin handbag that maker Hermès charges tens of thousands of dollars for and only sells to top clients.

"As I was walking through the restaurant she stopped me and said, 'I love your bag, it's the perfect size. It probably cost you a fortune."

When the woman asked if he would consider an offer for it, Walkup, a TikTok influencer, leveled with her: "Ma'am, the bag is a fake." The woman was surprised at how convincing the Birkin was and asked where she could buy one for herself. So he gave her the details of a private dealer who sells top-notch fakes.

Counterfeiters have perfected the knockoff handbag—and it is disrupting the economics of the luxury industry. Fake purses have always been around, but they were the cheap and plasticky kind that could be picked up for a few bucks from a sidewalk seller.

A new generation of "superfakes," as they are known in the industry, look as good as the real thing and cost anywhere from $500 to $5,000. Counterfeiters take your order through encrypted services such as WhatsApp or Telegram, give real-time customer service and deliver the goods straight to your door in a branded box.

They pay social-media influencers to promote illicit goods directly to American and European consumers. The technique is proving so good at sanitizing counterfeiters' shady image that the language used to talk about the bags is changing. The word "fake" isn't used anymore. Instead, fans call the purses replicas, mirror bags, superclones or 1:1s ("one to ones").