Five shipments. Two days. One landlocked state flooded with illicit luxury goods.
You might not expect $25 million in counterfeit jewelry from Hong Kong to end up in Kentucky. But Customs and Border Patrol officers who intercepted five huge shipments in two days weren’t surprised. The agency reports that this is a major and ongoing problem.
Here’s what they found:
- 1,118 counterfeit Cartier bracelets en route to Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Michigan
- 490 counterfeit Van Cleef & Arpels necklaces en route to Tampa
- 205 pairs of counterfeit Van Cleef & Arpels earrings en route to Tampa
- 80 counterfeit Van Cleef & Arpels rings en route to Tampa
Millions in fake luxury goods stopped
CBP reports that it seized 2,193 counterfeit luxury items across the five shipments. The jewelry would have had a combined MSRP of $25.32 million.
Louisville, Kentucky, is landlocked, so these goods must have entered through the airport. Louisville also may also have been a stopover after they arrived by boat. However they arrived, Louisville is a place for distribution because of its central location and thus cheap trucking.
You may have already encountered counterfeit luxury goods. They show up everywhere from eBay to street corners. CBP is now cracking down on these shipments before they reach consumers. The agency says 90% of the seizures come from China and Hong Kong.
“Intellectual property theft threatens America’s economic vitality and funds criminal activities and organized crime,” said LaFonda D. Sutton-Burke, Director of Field Operations, Chicago Field Office. “When consumers purchase counterfeit goods, legitimate companies lose revenue, which can force those companies to cut jobs. Our officers are dedicated to protecting private industry and consumers by removing these kinds of shipments from our commerce.”
