Counterfeit clothing and shoes are very popular right now, with thousands of pairs of fake Adidas Yeezy Boost sneakers currently flooding the market. While it may be considered pretentious to criticize the fashion sense of those who knowingly wear fake clothing, it should be known exactly what your money is going toward. Many people think that buying imitation purses or shoes is victimless, but this is sadly not true.

A 2016 report by Union des Fabricants (Unifab) shows that counterfeit goods hurts product innovation, the job economy, and consumer safety standards. However, the main point to take away from the report is that money from fake clothing is proven to fund terrorism. An example of this is the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks, which ended in the deaths of 12 people. The guns used in these attacks were purchased with money made by the sale of fake products. The first attacks at the World Trade Center were actually funded by a counterfeit store in New York. More recently, the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris were funded by false merchandise.

Terrorism and organized crime are usually funded by diverse ways, but counterfeiting is one of the easiest ways for criminals to make money. The market for these items is huge, with fake clothing accounting for about 5% to 7% of global trade. The money made from counterfeiting is also very hard to trace. Retail counterfeiting is lucrative, and it has a far less severe punishment than other unethical black market sales, such as drugs.

Furthermore, the production of these goods are produced in factories that use child labor, and these children are recruited by human trafficking. Remember the anger surrounding the Nike brand in the 2000s due to their low wages? These conditions are far worse than that, with counterfeit factory workers being paid less than half what a regular Chinese factory worker would be paid.

Past the pay, the working conditions counterfeit factory workers face are also tragic. Dana Thomas explained in her book, “Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster (2007),” that she saw a counterfeit assembly factory. There were children, all younger than 10 years old, with broken legs. Their legs were broken by factory managers, who punished them for complaining.

As the buying and selling of fake clothing and accessories become more and more normalized, the industry of such products grows more and more. The only way for us—as consumers—to combat the growth of this horrendous industry is to inform the public of the consequences to what they are buying, so that they may stop giving money to unethical people. On a higher scale, we must enforce stricter legislation and enforce the current counterfeiting laws we have.

Next time you see fake Adidas Yeezy Boosts or a fake Coach handbag in your local Asian market, think twice about your consumer habits and what your money may be funding.