'Using fake make-up glued my eyes together': The women who discovered the the dangers of buying counterfeit beauty products online after terrifying scare with knock-off designer eye shadows

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When Rosy Ferry found the limited edition Dior eye shadow palette she had been searching for on eBay, she was delighted. Not only had it sold out at her local department store, but this was £15 cheaper.

‘Although it was selling for £30 rather than the RRP of about £45, the eBay seller said it was because she had opened it to test the colours,’ says Rosy, a 28-year-old writer from the Scottish Borders.

‘That seemed reasonable and as it was a UK-based seller with good feedback, I decided to buy it.’

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When Rosy Ferry found the limited edition Dior eye shadow palette she had been searching for on eBay, she was delighted. Not only had it sold out at her local department store, but it was £15 cheaper online.

But when the package turned up, it was covered with Chinese customs stickers and was missing the velvet pouch and outer box that Dior cosmetics are sold with.

Despite that, Rosy reasoned that it looked OK and didn’t smell peculiar, so she decided to test it out. That night her eyes started to itch but it wasn’t until the next morning when she woke with her eyes glued together that she realised something was seriously wrong.

‘I had to bathe them to get them open,’ she recalls. ‘The lids were swollen, and my eyes were bloodshot. I was really worried that I’d caused myself serious damage.’

Too horrified by her appearance — and embarrassed by what had caused it — to leave the house, Rosy sent her husband to the pharmacy, and spent the next week religiously applying anti-bacterial eye drops.

‘Things started to improve, but for at least three weeks, it looked like I had burns around my tear ducts — the skin was all red and flaky and I couldn’t wear any eye make-up. I dread to think what was in the eye shadow that would have caused that sort of reaction.’

A department store saleswoman later compared Rosy’s palette with a sample of the genuine article and confirmed it was a fake. ‘I’ve learned my lesson,’ says Rosy. ‘I feel lucky it wasn’t anything more serious, but I certainly won’t be buying beauty products on eBay ever again.’

The counterfeit make-up left Rosie's eyes glued together. When she finally managed to open them after bathing with water, they were bloodshot, swollen, sore and looked she had 'burns' around the tearducts

Rosy is far from the only shopper to have unwittingly bought fake cosmetics. As the Mail recently revealed, the UK is being flooded with toxic counterfeit make-up, as criminal gangs working in underground laboratories churn out copies of cosmetics from brands such as Mac, Benefit and Urban Decay.

The fakes have been found to contain dangerous levels of lead, mercury, and even cyanide — and detectives at City of London Police are so concerned they have issued a national alert. This influx of potentially dangerous fake make-up comes as no surprise to Trading Standards Officer Simon Cripwell, of Warwickshire Trading Standards Service.

Earlier this year, he and his colleagues seized fake Mac, Benefit and Urban Decay products — these big selling brands tend to be the ones that are most likely to be counterfeited — from a beauty shop in Nuneaton after a tip-off from a customer who had had a bad skin reaction.

The cosmetics were found to contain high levels of heavy metals — lead, arsenic, copper, mercury and cadmium — which have been linked to many health problems from allergic reactions to nerve disorders, and even death.

‘When I first started working in Trading Standards, 18 years ago, a lot of the counterfeit goods we saw were branded clothing. But over the years we’ve seen an increase in other products — like cosmetics,’ says Simon.

Louise Emery, 30, from Newcastle upon Tyne, was given a bag of Mac cosmetics worth around £150 after a friend had bought it for £40, from a colleague who said he had bought several online

‘Finding counterfeit make-up in a High Street shop is still quite rare. Most of our seizures tend to be on market stalls, or we’ll intercept goods coming into the country via the UK Ports Authority.’

But Trading Standards can also prosecute individuals and companies selling fakes online. In 2014, Deborah Hamber, from Exmouth, Devon, received a four-month suspended prison sentence plus 150 hours of community service for selling £25,000 worth of counterfeit Benefit, Lancome and Mac cosmetics through eBay.

Yet, despite tireless operations by Trading Standards working hand in hand with the police, dangerous make-up still seems to be widely available online.

While counterfeiters are not deliberately trying to poison consumers, Dr Emma Meredith, president of the Society of Cosmetic Scientists explains that they have scant regard for the safety of what goes into the products.

‘They will use anything that happens to look like the intended ingredient,’ she says. ‘Their products won’t have gone through a robust safety assessment and could easily have been contaminated by microbes, or anything else, meaning consumers have no idea of their exact content, their safety or more importantly what harm they could do.’

Something that Louise Emery knows all too well. Last Christmas, Louise, 30, from Newcastle upon Tyne, was given a bag of Mac cosmetics worth around £150 after a friend had bought it for £40 from a colleague who said he had bought several online.

The products were subsequently found to be counterfeit but, unaware of this, on Boxing Day, Louise tried out the set which contained lipstick, face powder, lip-liner, eyeliner, mascara and eye-shadow. The next morning, her eyes were stuck together and swollen and her cheeks felt sore.

‘By the evening my face had swollen to twice its normal size and I had what looked like severe burns beneath my eyes and on my cheeks,’ says Louise.

Her GP prescribed anti-inflammatory tablets, anti-histamines and an antibiotic. It took two weeks for the swelling and the burn-like rash to settle down.

‘Every time I caught sight of myself in a mirror I’d burst into tears,’ she says. ‘I was worried I’d be scarred for life.

‘And the thought of what might be in those products — urine, rat droppings, poison — that I’d put on my face made me feel sick.’

It is not just your skin you’re putting at risk when you buy from a dodgy website, it’s your wallet — and possibly your identity.

Chris Flower, director of the Cosmetic, Toiletry & Perfumery Association (CTPA), says: ‘Many sites selling counterfeit goods have no scruples about taking your credit card details and your personal information to sell on.

‘You might think you’re saving money by getting products cheap, but you could well lose out financially in the long run.’

He says that while it is always sensible to buy from the company’s own website, even then you should be on your guard.

On Boxing Day, Louise tried out the make-up set. The next morning, her eyes were stuck together and swollen and her cheeks felt sore (pictured); 'By the evening my face had swollen to twice its normal size'

‘Thieves can hack a site and divert you to their own so if you’re asked to refresh a page, and it then looks odd, be wary,’ he says. ‘If you’re not sure about a website, look at the spelling and grammar, which can often be a red flag.

‘The same is true on the packaging — if L’Oreal is spelled with a lower case “o”, it’s not real.’

Even multi-million pound brands employing highly-paid intellectual property lawyers struggle to hold back the tide of bogus products that could be endangering the health of consumers.

Earlier this month, a quick scan of eBay and Amazon revealed a number of traders selling what appeared to be counterfeit cosmetics. On eBay, there were Mac-branded palettes the company had never made, and Urban Decay eye shadow sets on sale for £9.99, a fraction of the £38 retail price.

On Amazon, a customer who bought a Chanel eye pencil (RRP £17) for £16.50 (+£3.99 delivery) complained it had not come with the sharpener that all Chanel pencils do. Another took issue with a Mac eyeshadow saying: ‘There is less product than a real one, no name sticker and it doesn’t stay on the palette [not magnetic].’

A spokesman for eBay insists they are ‘committed to combating the sale of counterfeit goods’ and ‘continually introduce new proactive measures’. Similarly Amazon say: ‘Amazon.co.uk does not allow the sale of counterfeit items on its Marketplace platform. Any seller found doing so will be subject to action, including removal of their account.’

But it’s just not enough — and some companies are fighting back, as Blake Hughes, European general manager at skincare brand, Murad, explains.

‘We have a special security hologram seal on every product which proves the product is genuine,’ he says. ‘It also contains a code so we track where the product was bought from and prevent products from being distributed by unauthorised sellers.’

Murad are selling their products officially on Amazon sites which means unauthorised sellers cannot sell Murad products on the site. However, until every beauty brand takes similar steps, caveat emptor should be the rule of thumb for all beauty fans.