US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized two shipments of counterfeit designer jewelry and phone cases in Louisville on June 12.
Items found included over 2,000 rings, 300 phone cases with fake logos, and two shipments from Hong Kong; one headed to Georgia, one to Florida. If the merchandise were not counterfeit, it would retail for about $1.76 million.
The first shipment contained 2,500 rings displaying the logos of Versace, Gucci, Bulgari and Rolex, which arrived from Hong Kong and was heading to Suwanee, Georgia.
A second shipment contained 319 phone cases, 210 watch bands bearing Louis Vuitton logos, and sixty watch bands with the Gucci logo. It also arrived from Hong Kong and was headed to a residence in Orlando, Florida.
The items found in those shipments were deemed to be counterfeit by CBP’s Centers of Excellence and Expertise, the agency’s trade experts.
“Counterfeit goods are poor quality products that cost US businesses billions of dollars a year while robbing our country of jobs and tax revenues,” said LaFonda D. Sutton-Burke, the director for field operations at the Chicago Field Office. “CBP officers throughout the nation remain committed to stopping counterfeit smuggling, taking profits from organized crime, and helping protect our communities from potentially hazardous knockoffs.”
On a typical day in the fiscal year of 2022, CBP seized $8 million worth of products with intellectual property rights violations.
Nationwide, CBP seized over $24.5M shipments of IPR violations that would have been worth just shy of $3B, had the goods been genuine during that time.