DOWNTOWN : 2 Charged in Clothing Counterfeiting Case

In the latest in a string of counterfeit cases involving the popular Karl Kani and Cross Colours denim clothing lines, the owner and manager of a local garment factory have been charged with manufacturing illegal knockoffs of the two designer brands.

Song Suk Park, 51, owner of Victory Fashions at 425 W. 11th St., and Manuel Enrique Sagastume, 36, manager, are scheduled to be arraigned Jan. 3 in Los Angeles Municipal Court on one count each of counterfeiting a trademark. If convicted of the misdemeanor, they each face up to one year in jail and a $5,000 fine. They are out on their own recognizance pending arraignment.

Contacted at Victory Fashions last week, Sagastume, a resident of the Wilshire District, referred questions to owner Park, who authorities said is also known as Son Suk Knepley, Song Suk Yoon and Song Suk Kim and has homes in Cerritos and Central Los Angeles. “I just work here. I didn’t know it was illegal,” Sagastume said.

Park could not be reached for comment.

The case against Victory Fashions was built after an employee of Threads 4 Life, the Los Angeles company that owns the Karl Kani and Cross Colours trademarks, stumbled onto the counterfeit operation during a visit to another business in the same 11th Street building, city prosecutors said.

Threads 4 Life officials complained to the state Department of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation, which searched Victory Fashions on June 16 and found 1,508 counterfeit Karl Kani pants and a unspecified number of Karl Kani and Cross Colours rivets, labels, buttons and zippers, according to prosecutors. The clothing, worth $227,000, was in boxes, ready for shipment to Chicago, said Darryl Phillips, special agent for the Department of Justice’s trademark infringement unit in Los Angeles.

The baggy Karl Kani pants, which sell for $70 to $80, and multicolored Cross Colours street-style clothing, which average about $55 per item, have become particularly popular among youth. And Victory Fashions is just one of more than a dozen counterfeiters that have “hurt our business tremendously,” said Carl Jones, president and CEO of Threads 4 Life. Jones said illegal knockoffs account for losses in the millions for Threads 4 Life and its vendors.

Fifteen counterfeiting suspects in Los Angeles alone are currently being criminally prosecuted and sued in civil court by the company, Jones said. The company has been fighting counterfeiters here and in other cities almost since its inception three years ago, Jones said. “When we first started with Cross Colours, I’d go into malls and see (Cross Colours) children’s clothing, and we weren’t even manufacturing children’s clothing,” he said.

Phillips agreed that because of the popularity of the clothes, Threads 4 Life is “having a lot of problems” with fakes. Phillips said one local counterfeiter was caught with 6,000 pairs of Karl Kani pants in his factory.

Other well-known clothing and accessory manufacturers such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Nike are among designers that have been victims of counterfeiters, who generate a $50-billion annual industry, Phillips said. “Downtown Los Angeles is the hub of counterfeiters, and they pick labels that are lucrative . . . all the real hot items,” Phillips said.

Phillips and legitimate clothing manufacturers hope a Jan. 1 change in the counterfeit laws will add bite to the enforcement. Counterfeiting a trademark will become a felony on the first offense; currently, first-time offenders can be charged only with a misdemeanor.