In my story today, I looked at how the NFL and its teams, including the Baltimore Ravens, are now closely monitoring the proliferation of China-based websites that are selling counterfeit merchandise to unsuspecting (and, of course, suspecting) U.S. consumers.

The NFL has filed a pair of lawsuits over the past year in New York that have served to take down around 800 websites that they alleged were selling counterfeit jerseys and other unlicensed NFL products, league officials told me.

The NFL, which supports the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), is going after these website operators in what has turned into an online game of cat and mouse. It follows in the footsteps of other big brands, such as Polo Ralph Lauren and North Face, in terms of using civil actions to shut down these sites through injunctions and so-called "ex parte" orders.

The most recent NFL case, NFL vs. Momo Lee, et al. was unsealed last month in federal court in New York.

The NFL and the Ravens told me that their efforts are really new within the past year, in terms of tracking these counterfeit sites and trying to shut them down.

Some consumers are savvy and know that they're not buying "the real thing" on some of these sites -- they're just hoping for a cheap facsimile in hopes of saving money and just having something to wear on game day.

But some consumers, like Barbra Skarzynski, were genuinely duped by a website claiming to be official. She ended up with a discolored Lardarius Webb jersey, with his name spelled "EWBB." That's a picture of it below taken by Baltimore Sun photographer Kim Hairston: