I can’t say I didn’t know about the possibility of getting fakes, but I knew I would get refund if this was the case. And I did. Just before this I got a cheap Cirrus Logic ADC chip from China and made custom ADC and it was as good as the one I bought from the US, which was made in China too. It is just that MSGEQ7 is quite specific chip, popular among Arduino enthusiasts, so some Chinese entrepreneur thought they could copy the design and flog it.