$10 Million in Counterfeit Goods Seized by Customs
Phony Rolex watches, ersatz Chanel perfume and other counterfeit goods worth more than $10 million have been seized in raids on what could be the largest counterfeit-fraud scheme in U.S. Customs Service history, officials said Wednesday.
“This is truly fakery on a world-class scale,” said William von Raab, commissioner of the Customs Service.
The goods were confiscated--and 20 people were arrested--in a series of raids Tuesday by 200 customs agents in Miami, Philadelphia, New York and Laredo, Tex.
About half a million counterfeit watches falsely identified as being manufactured by Rolex, Piaget, Cartier and other companies--as well as smaller amounts of counterfeit Gucci, Estee Lauder and Chanel No. 5 perfumes and Ray-Ban sunglasses--were seized.
Von Raab estimated that the merchandise was worth $10 million wholesale but said that it represented only a fraction of the goods handled by a multimillion-dollar counterfeit ring.
Criminal complaints were filed in federal court in Manhattan charging 14 people with conducting a racketeering enterprise that imported, assembled and distributed counterfeit merchandise.
Five others were charged with trafficking in counterfeit goods, and one defendant was charged with perjuring himself when questioned before a federal grand jury, von Raab said.
The racketeering charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years per count and allow for the forfeiture of any profits resulting from the enterprise.
Three more defendants were at large, he said, and the investigation will continue.
The principal defendant in the case, Julius Pinkesz, was charged with running an organization operating through a variety of companies that imported cheap imitations of name-brand watches--mainly from Hong Kong--affixed counterfeit names and logos and distributed them to the public.
Pinkesz is suspected of having trafficked in vast quantities of counterfeit merchandise for more than a decade in an international multimillion-dollar enterprise with sales spanning the United States, Puerto Rico and much of South America, according to Rudolph W. Giuliani, the U.S. attorney who conducted the investigation with the Customs Service.
Pinkesz, 55, of Brooklyn, his twin brother, Jacob, and their South American Watch Co. had been enjoined several times previously from selling the imitations.
The Customs Service used court-authorized electronic surveillance wiretapping equipment for the first time in this type of case, Giuliani said.
The counterfeit watches, sold mainly in flea markets and discount retail outlets, could often be distinguished from the legitimate goods in quality, weight and price, officials said.
“These watches in the legitimate trade are hundreds and thousands of dollars,” Von Raab said. “If you paid $40 for a Rolex, you probably got a counterfeit.”
Yet, with counterfeits of some of the less expensive brand-name watches such as Sanyo and Casio, “thousands of people were defrauded because they believed they had purchased watches that were in the price range--$100 watches for $80.” Only when they returned them to the company when they needed repairs did they learn that they were counterfeits.
