First off, if you’ve been sold counterfeit or fake shoes, you have my sympathies. It’s a terrible feeling when you first realize that you’ve been cheated.

Short version: you can report to eBay, Paypal, the USPS (mailing counterfeit items that the mailer received money is mail fraud & thus very illegal), the Internet Fraud Complaint Center for the FBI, and the Better Business Bureau. There’s a very good chance that the company who was being counterfeited would also appreciate an email or a phone call with the seller’s information (eBay ID, website, or name of business/address/phone number) when you find counterfeits.

If it’s within 45 days, you can file a dispute with Paypal and chances are you’ll get your money back. After 45 days, a dispute can still be filed – when I spoke with a Paypal representative, she said that they keep the disputes on file for 180 days and if there’s enough complaints about a certain seller, chances are the dispute will be revisited whether they were filed past the cut-off date or not.

This is what the rep that I spoke to said as far as reporting to eBay:

Go to your Paypal account and sign in. Find the transaction where you bought the counterfeit item and click on it, it’ll have the eBay item number and it should have a link to the auction under “Item Title”. Click on the auction link, under “other item info” there’s share, print, and report item. Click “report item” . Reason for report = Counterfeits and Copy Violations, Detailed reason = potential trademark infringement, additional information = counterfeit clothing/shoes/etc. You then have 100 characters to explain. It may help to have shortened links (to screencaps or articles); use a shortener like bit.ly.

Good luck!