Inspection teams from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry recently seized 55,000 fake cosmetics of different brands past their expiry dates.

The teams raided a villa in Al-Murabaa district in Riyadh and arrested a number of foreign workers involved in the illegal trade of pasting labels of famous brands on bottles containing fake creams and body lotions and stamping them with new expiry dates prior to selling them.

The ministry’s inspection teams with the cooperation of the security department also confiscated one million labels and tools used to conceal the actual expiry date of the products.

Further investigations revealed that official documents found during the raid pointed to the existence of warehouses inside another villa in Dammam belonging to the same establishment.

The teams moved swiftly to the site in Dammam and seized large quantities of the labels stamped with fake expiry dates in addition to some packaging machines.