This week, Lee Morris at Fstoppers published a video titled “Your Memory Cards Are Probably Fake.” In it, he asserts that scam companies are so prevalent and so good at faking their products that it’s likely nearly every photographer is a victim.

That seems like a pretty broad statement to make, but given the rising cost of memory, it might be more of an issue now than it was just a couple of years ago. This is always a pretty baffling decision, but photographers will spend thousands of dollars on a new camera, and then try to find the cheapest possible deal on memory cards. That is the mentality that these scam companies try and take advantage of.

In the video, Morris shows multiple SanDisk-branded memory cards that he acquired through a mix of Amazon and eBay and notes that, side by side, they look identical to one another. The illegitimate card is visually indistinguishable.

“SanDisk, specifically, is always changing the design on their boxes and on their memory cards. So, it’s not like you can easily look up what the card or the packaging should look like online because just when you think you know what you’re talking about and you know what the box should look like, SanDisk comes out with a new design,” Lee says.

He’s not wrong, and he was even tripped up by the major design change SanDisk went through recently where it redid its logo as part of its split from former parent company Western Digital.

What is a Scam Memory Card?

As Morris points out, the strategy behind a scam memory card is pretty much the same as when companies do the same for scam SSDs or HDDs. In a nutshell, these scammers will use an official-looking case and fill it with lower-end memory, then sell it at the price of the higher-end product.

They do the same for SD cards, but in that case, it’s much more difficult to diagnose, as the internals of a scam SD card are visually identical to a legitimate one. The difference will only make itself known in one of two ways: either the card will not have as much storage capacity on it as is claimed on the label, or the speed of the card will not be as fast as claimed.

The only way to check if a card is legitimate in this case is to run tests on it. Morris recommends a software called F3XSwift, which will test the card for its true capacity, as well as Blackmagic Disk Speed Test to check for its actual speed. PetaPixel also recommends Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, but cannot comment on the viability of F3XSwift.

How Scam Memory Cards Get You

For the video, Morris purchased cards from Amazon and eBay. Suffice to say, photographers should never be buying memory cards on eBay, so Morris’s decision to do so for the purposes of this video feels a bit disingenuous to how a responsible photographer would act. That said, there are legitimate issues with Amazon and Walmart.

Lee asserts that because of the way Amazon and Walmart set up their online storefronts, it’s easy not to notice the extremely important detail of who the seller of a product actually is.

And he’s right.

Looking at Amazon today, the top options for a SanDisk SD card are a 256GB V30 card and a 128GB V30 card. The first card is sold by a company called MemoryWhiz while the second is shipped and sold by Amazon. In both cases, the product pages for these cards have a “Visit the SanDisk Store” link at the top. But when I follow that link and dig to find the SD cards, all of the SD cards there are shipped and sold by Adorama.

So, really, the only thing these cards have in common is the Amazon storefront, as all three will come from different sources.

Morris believes that sellers with names like “MemoryWhiz” are the most likely source of these scams. In his case, it was a seller called “Stavy Sales.”

“Who are they? I have no idea. And here’s what makes this impossible to keep track of. If you slide down here and you click on other sellers on Amazon, you can see there’s 20 different options here. And we can go through each one of these here and look at all of these different sellers of this exact same product. And as you refresh this page, this sold by could change,” he says.

“You might think you’re buying it from Stavy Sales, whoever they are, but without even noticing, you might just refresh the page and all of a sudden you are purchasing from another seller who is claiming to sell this exact product, but it could be a fake,” he continues.

“The only reason that I’m focusing on SanDisk in this video is because SanDisk are the only cards that I personally use. I trust them the most.”

That’s an interesting take, given that SanDisk is the only major memory manufacturer in the photography space that has a history of making business decisions that cause photographers to lose their data.

PetaPixel reached out to SanDisk to ask it for its recommended method for avoiding scammers, but the company did not respond to requests for comment.

What Can Photographers Do?

One of the claims that Morris makes in his video is that there are only a few companies that actually manufacture their own dies for memory cards.

“What I’ve recently learned is that there are only a handful of companies on Earth that are even capable of making the internal components of an SD memory card, and all of them are legitimate companies that would never make fake memory cards. Many of the other brands that I’m sure you’ve heard of who might sell more expensive memory cards than SanDisk don’t manufacture cards at all, and they are purchasing these pre-made chips from different factories around the world and putting their sticker on them,” he says.

This is a pretty cynical and oversimplified version of reality.

“On the relabeling point, it’s a fair thing to raise. The reality is that only a handful of companies actually fabricate NAND, so most card brands are sourcing flash and controllers rather than making them,” Chris Kooistra, Vice President of Marketing at OWC tells PetaPixel.

“What separates brands is everything that happens after that: which grade of NAND gets selected, how the controller and firmware are tuned, how much validation each card goes through, and who stands behind it when one fails in the field. Firmware is a good example of why that distinction matters. Our Innergize software runs health checks, applies firmware updates, and keeps cards performing the way they should over time. It also only works with OWC cards and OWC readers, so the ecosystem itself does the verifying. A genuine OWC card runs in it. Something wearing our label that isn’t actually ours won’t. That’s an ecosystem doing real work, not a sticker. Put simply, if a memory card were just a label on someone else’s product, there would be no reason for OWC to be in this category at all.”

Morris didn’t talk to any memory card companies about this issue for his video. Instead, he speaks with a company called Salvage Data. They tell Morris that it’s not actually SanDisk that is the issue he sees the most, but rather scam versions of Lexar and Samsung.

PetaPixel reached out to Lexar and asked if it had experienced issues with counterfeit or fraudulent memory cards being sold as genuine Lexar products.

“As with many leading consumer electronics brands, Lexar is aware that counterfeit products can occasionally appear on open marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, and others. Protecting consumers and maintaining product authenticity are top priorities for Lexar, and we actively monitor channels to address suspected counterfeit listings when identified so they can be removed,” Lexar says.

“Lexar products undergo rigorous validation and quality testing before reaching consumers. Because counterfeit products bypass these controls, consumers may experience performance, reliability, or capacity issues that do not reflect genuine Lexar products.”

But while Lexar agrees that counterfeit, scam cards do exist, it does clarify that Morris’ methods aren’t clear or, more importantly, don’t reflect the actions of an informed customer.

“We cannot comment on the claims made in the video or the methods used to reach those conclusions. eBay is not an authorized reseller of Lexar products, so extra precautions should be taken when purchasing from non-authorized channels. It’s also worth noting that the video appears to be a paid collaboration between Salvage Data, a data recovery platform, and Fstoppers, as there is a partner ID tied to the URL link,” Lexar says.

This partnership is not disclosed by Morris.

“If the focus of the video is to both raise awareness of unauthentic products and offer image recovery services, it’s worth mentioning that Lexar offers free image recovery software, reinforcing our commitment to customers in what is typically a paid service from other brands and services,” Lexar adds, likely in reference to Salvage Data offering a similar service, but for a fee.

To avoid scams, Lexar says photographers should purchase only from authorized retailers, which can be found on the “Where to buy” page of its website.

“When shopping on online marketplaces, consumers should carefully review seller information and, when possible, look for products marked as ‘Ships from and sold by Amazon.com’ to help ensure inventory is fulfilled directly through Amazon’s first-party retail channel,” Lexar says.

“Consumers should also be cautious of unusually low prices that appear significantly below market value on open marketplaces, as these are often signals of unauthorized or counterfeit products. Purchasing through reputable retailers remains the best way to ensure product authenticity.”

“We haven’t seen that firsthand with our own product, but it’s a growing problem in the category,” Kooistra says regarding scam cards.

“Counterfeit and relabeled cards usually move through unauthorized sellers, look fine on the outside, and don’t reveal the lower-grade flash or fake capacity until the card is full or under load. The protection is the same one we’d give for any storage: buy direct or from an authorized reseller, treat unusually low pricing as a warning sign, and use the tools available to confirm what you’ve got is genuine.”

So, Are Counterfeit, Scam SD Memory Cards Really a Problem?

Counterfeit memory card are clearly a real issue, but how widespread the problem is depends greatly on how a buyer acts. For one, if a customer is buying memory cards from unapproved sellers, like eBay, they are putting themselves at significantly increased risk. When memory prices are as high as they are now, it’s easy to understand the rationale, but going to third parties and buying new or, as Morris did, “refurbished” cards from sketchy sources is just asking for trouble.

The main issue is going to be Amazon. As of 2024, more than 80% of U.S. households shop on Amazon. That means a majority of consumers will likely get their memory cards there, and when Amazon clearly is favoring sellers that aren’t authorized retailers — as demonstrated above — that’s a problem.

This is only going to be solved through a combination of Amazon doing a better job of highlighting the correct products and sellers and buyers becoming more informed. So while Morris’ methods aren’t without flaws, the general message he’s attempting to convey is sound.

Full disclosure: OWC is a sponsor of the PetaPixel YouTube channel. No partners ever have any say in editorial coverage.