Karin Chiche has been in hiding for many months. FACTZ tried to hunt her down with no luck, but surprisingly, she returned to Instagram to showcase her extraordinary life.

Thank you, Karin.

Now back to business, FACTZ has retained the services of a Birkin authenticator and employee of Hermes. He doesn’t want to be named but asked if we can call him “Gomes,” pronounced as Gomez. Don’t ask … live with it.

Gomes tells FACTZ that a person can only buy two new Birkin bags a year per family- meaning a married couple cannot buy four, and the individual has to be verified by Hermes to prevent resale.

He said, “You see so many quality fake Birkin purses because of the real ones’ rarity. Nobody knows what a real one looks like because even owning a FAKE is rare. Quality fakes cost anywhere from $2500 to $10k, mainly coming from the Asian markets like China and Singapore. However, there are mass production manufacturers in New Jersey who order offshore and produce. Kelvin Gift is who I am talking about. You can order 30 bags at a discounted rate of $1k. It’s a huge problem we [Hermes] face.”

Anyway, if I’m going to do this #BirkinSyndicate investigative reporting- legal suggests I hire experts in the field. So here we are. I asked Gomes to look at Karin’s IG. He prefaced that “these are pictures which could be doctored and without actually seeing the physical bag, I cannot give you my verified answer, only opinion.”

I told Gomez for today’s warmup, LFG!!!

“In my opinion, this bag is not authentic and shows signs of wear and tear. It is a used product. However, notice the gold barring hardware which is signature to a 25cm or 30cm, it is not perfectly 90 degrees horizontal. The box is also discolored. Some of the stitching is off as well. This is just my opinion from looking at thousands of bags. I would be more than happy to review for her physically,” said Gomes.

I also want to clarify that Michelle Berk and Karin Chiche are two different gangs. More to come.