The guy who started a thread here today about his kid's rear derailleur - I wanted to point him to a better replacement than the identical part he'd found at a much inflated price. So I searched "Acera derailleur" on Amazon. The top result - from a brand called "Bessie Sparks" - was a copy of the previous generation. Their first photo has Shimano markings but the rest do not. Amazon shows it listed as a "Best Seller" with five whole reviews and three stars.

This is a new generation of listings. The previous generation were parts that were functional, slightly weird and all had six-letter names.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/s...copyright.html

The new ones are definitely just scanned copies. Another example is the "Fooker" pedals reviewed by Berm Peak Express a month ago, which are from a 3D scan of Race Face Chesters down to the barely-altered logo
Amazon is not innocent here. They support the forgers with advice how to use the website and the American market, and with SEO.

I wonder what Shimano's lawyers are doing about all this. I'm sure it's not nothing, not after killing all the gray market imports a year and a half ago.