Edmonton police said an investigation sparked by a number of complaints over fake cellphones has culminated in charges laid against a teenager, and a warning for consumers.

Police said in May and June, 2015, officers received a number of complaints from the public over fake cellphones, billed as Samsung phones, were sold through an online classifieds ad.

EPS said the phones in question were advertised on Kijiji as brand-new, boxed, Samsung S6 cellphones.

The buyers would meet the seller in public, and bought the phones for between $450 and $600.

Later on, the buyers would discover their phones were not brand-name, and they didn’t work properly.

“They’re much like counterfeit money, or a counterfeit Rolex watch, they’re made to look like the real thing but they’re not actually,” EPS Const. Tyrone O’Dea said.

“Somebody who has never seen an S6, to them it looks like a genuine phone because they don’t have a comparison,” Samsung Store manager Suki Singh said.

According to EPS, a constable in Southwest Division followed up on the complaints and found that dozens of the counterfeit products had been advertised on Kijiji over four weeks.

After a two-week investigation, EPS said a suspect was arrested and charged with fraud – an 18-year-old male is facing two charges of fraud under $5,000.

O’Dea told CTV news the accused had other accomplices, but investigators couldn’t gather enough evidence to make additional arrests.

Investigators said the counterfeit cellphones were purchased online from overseas at a cost of about $100.

With files from Susan Amerongen