How to avoid accidently buying illegal bootlegs from china

So I've been looking @ chinese inventory to expand my venture, I've had some good success but I keep running into an issue, wondering if anyone has some insight for me:

I keep finding items that are of interest to me, but I find out they have a brand name on them.

Sometimes the brand is a company (usually US) that has an established public presence and/or sells their product, so It's pretty safe to assume theyre illegal bootlegs

However, a fair amount of time the brand has no obvious public precense, some might have a fb page with little to nothing going on with it besides the brand name and maybe a few pictures, and other times I can't seem to find any info on this brand or its maker at all

If a chinese item has a brand on it but I can't find a "legitimate" distributor, is it possible/normal for the chinese manf. to have just created some random brand to try and sell it better, though it actually has no one in legal control of it? ie no patents/copyrights/etc and thus safe to buy?

how do yall handle this, what are the rules you follow?

Avoid name brands, look for more common items to purchase. If you purchase a name brand there is a very good likelihood they are fake. Especially if it's name brand and 40-50% below retail price. You have to think about how the prices are that low if the products are branded. If you want to resell counterfeit products avoid the big marketplaces like eBay and Amazon and focus on selling in your local area for cash. Although this is illegal activity it will generate some income for you, but honestly it's not really worth it because you WILL run into a problem at some point guaranteed. The best plan of action is to develop your own "private label" of a product and then design the packaging and have a reputable manufacturer overseas produce this product for you. This is the way the big boys do it. However it will cost more money to do it this way. Best of luck.

not to be rude, but that response makes it seem like you didn't actually read the post or my questions...

im not at all interested in dealing with bootlegs/fakes or anything illegal, that's the entire point of this question.

For example -
Note: this is just the first item i randomly saw to use as an example

https://www.alibaba.com/product-det...llet-Brown-Leather_60561585706/showimage.html

This is a wallet, it's brand name is "bal manent". Ever heard of that? yeah me neither.

googling that does not seem to yield any indication that this is a product made by an actual company that's interested in selling to the consumer market. You find no company website, no company facebook, not even any standard retail stores carrying it. All you find is more and more Chinese wholesale websites stocked with them. It doens't appear to have any representation in the US at all.

and thus the questions:

Is this a trademarked/patented/protected/etc item/brand?
Is this legal to import this into the states?
do chinese manufacturers create "unofficial brands" if you will for their products to give them more appeal to consumers? ("this branded one is better because it's got a brand, unlike that generic one next to it that has no branding" mentality?)

this problem goes on and on, every single niche i look at has situations like this. Item has some kind of obscure branding on it that seemingly has no actualy establishment, like it's just an added gimmic to drive sales a little better