Watch Your Ass: Police Raid Fake Toilet Paper Factory

If you can't trust your toilet paper, what can you trust? Police in Beijing busted a fake toilet paper manufacturing facility yesterday, catching the makers red-handed wrapping their goods with the packaging from more than 10 popular brands of toilet paper.

According to front-page news in today's Beijing News, police in Daxing walked in on the factory, run by a middle-aged couple who claimed to have invested over RMB 600,000 in their paper-making facility. The brand wrapping and quality certification certificates were easily purchased from a source in nearby Baoding, Hebei, one woman from the factory admitted.

Four hours and 10,000 rolls later, police left with three trucks full of evidence that were originally destined to be sold to their regular customers, typically urban wholesale markets and itinerant traders, factory personnel said. With prices 20 percent lower than the genuine article, they claimed to have never had a shortage of customers.

Beijing News journalists comparing one brand's genuine package of toilet paper with a fake said that they looked almost identical (no mention of the feel), with the exception of the quality certificate, which in the genuine roll was red, while the other was green. The price of the genuine brand was RMB 15, while the fake was RMB 14.

Good news for big-brand store shoppers: the pirate paper-makers said that large chain store supply chains are too tight for them to get their product into, so they rely on smaller shops and wholesale outlets for their goods. So if you want to watch what you're using for your undercarriage, you'd be best to stick to big-brand outlets for your sanitary paper goods.

Photo: Beijing News