There's a pattern every veteran buyer knows: the moment a part goes on allocation, the open market fills with offers that look too good to be true. Most of them are. Counterfeiters follow shortages the way storm chasers follow weather - the tighter the market, the better the margins on a remarked part, and the more desperate buyers are willing to skip verification.

This quarter, with memory tightening and legacy parts hitting EOL in batches, our inspection lab has been busy. Here's a representative sample of what didn't make it through.

What we intercepted

  • Remarked memory devices. Lower-speed-grade parts sanded, blacktopped, and remarked as faster bins. Under magnification the new marking sat on a surface with the wrong texture; XRF confirmed the topcoat. The giveaway upstream: a spot offer well under market in a rising market.
  • Refurbished "new" parts. Devices recovered from scrapped boards, reballed, and sold as factory-new. X-ray showed inconsistent solder ball composition across the reel; decapsulation confirmed multiple die revisions inside a single "homogeneous" lot.
  • Wrong-die substitutions. Packages marked as an industrial-temp variant carrying the commercial-temp die. Electrically functional at room temperature - which is exactly why electrical test alone isn't enough. These fail in the field, not at incoming.
  • Empty or damaged moisture-sensitive packaging. Not counterfeit, but just as costly: MSD-sensitive parts shipped in unsealed bags with expired indicators. We bake, re-bag, and document - or reject.

The tells, in order of how often they save us

Most interceptions start before the lab. The paper trail fails first: a supplier who can't produce a clean chain of custody, date codes that don't exist in the manufacturer's records, or a country-of-origin that doesn't match the part's known fab sites. When the paperwork passes, the physical inspection takes over - marking permanency tests, surface texture under the microscope, XRF material analysis, X-ray of the die and bond wires, and decapsulation on sample units for die verification against a known-good reference.

If you're buying on the open market right now

  • Price is a signal. In a rising market, a deep discount is a red flag, not a win.
  • Demand traceability first. If the chain of custody can't be documented, assume the worst.
  • Test to AS6081, not just "it powers on." Wrong-die and refurbished parts pass basic electrical checks.
  • Get the report. Whoever sources for you should hand over the full test documentation with every lot - not a certificate that says "tested."

Zero escapes is a process, not a promise

Every open-market part we sell goes through our in-house lab - there is no "trusted vendor" shortcut lane. That's why our counterfeit-escape count stands at zero: not because the suspect parts aren't out there, but because every lot has to earn its way through the same gate. The full inspection process is documented in our Quality Trust Center, and every shipment leaves with the test report attached.