Chinese officials have ordered two of the five fake stores already located in the south-western city of Kunming to suspend business while they’re investigated, a local government website said on Monday. But, it’s since emerged that similar fakes exist in countries from Croatia to Venezuela.

The investigation follows a blog post last week by an American woman who lives in Kunming in Yunnan province. She stumbled across three shops masquerading as Apple stores in the city and took photos and posted them on her BirdAbroad blog.

Now, according to readers who have contacted her since the original post, more fakes exist in numerous locations around the world too.

Kunming’s government website claimed that the Kunming Trade and Industry Bureau had since inspected more than 300 electronics stores in Kunming, and subsequently confirmed the existence of the five fake Apple stores, shutting two.

The reason the other three stores are not closed? Officials did not find any fake Apple products for sale.

Apple has 13 official resellers in Kunming, but no official stores, and the company has 331 official stores worldwide, which in the past financial quarter brought in $3.5 billion in revenue.

Now that readers have contacted her with details about “fake (or at least seriously questionable)” Apple stores in countries including Burma, Croatia, Columbia, Slovenia, Spain and Venezuela, it begs the question of just how rampant the fake Apple product market is.

Some of the fake stores are really good impostors – modeled on Apple’s iconic stores – right down to the winding staircase and the staff wearing the customary blue t-shirts.

[Source: Guardian]