Counterfeit and pirated products make up 2.5% of global trade, according to a 2021 study. It sounds incremental, until you do the math — that’s $464 billion a year.

Nearly 40 participants have signed up since registration opened earlier this month, Shelley said. Anyone can register to participate. More than a dozen mentors, including Amazon executives, counterfeiting experts and Mason professors, have signed up as well.

Christa Brzozowski, Amazon’s senior manager of public policy, and her team approached Mason months ago, and the idea for the hackathon bloomed, Shelley said. 

“I just think it’s a very innovative problem and a very innovative way to go after it,” Shelley said. “Amazon has embraced it.”

Typically, hackathons take place over mere days, Shelley said. But the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, which has partnered with Blue Clarity on two previous hackathons related to human trafficking, wanted to do something with potentially more impact.

Participants will engage virtually across 10 weeks, competing for $22,000 in prizes. A panel of judges, including Amazon’s Westmoreland as well as Paul DelPonte, executive director of the National Crime Prevention Council, will make the final calls during an in-person finale on Nov. 5.

The Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center is located on the university’s Mason Square campus in Arlington, next to the construction site where the 345,000-square-foot Fuse building — designed to attract top tech employers like Amazon and to funnel computer science graduates into employment — is scheduled to open in 2025.