Made in the Shade: Raid Nets 100,000 Fake Oakley Glasses

In one of the largest busts involving fake Oakley Inc. eye wear, detectives raided a South El Monte warehouse Thursday morning and confiscated about 100,000 pairs of counterfeit sunglasses with a street value of about $10 million, police said.

The raid at KSY Trading at 11237 Thienes Ave. followed a six-month investigation, police said. The company received the component parts from Taiwan and assembled the sunglasses at the warehouse, police said.

The investigation was conducted by Norwalk sheriff’s detectives and Investigative Consultants of Hermosa Beach, a private firm that ferrets out counterfeiters for about 30 companies--including Oakley--that deal in products with trademarks.

Yanan Chen Yeh, 56, and Chean Lian Lee, 33, were arrested on suspicion of possessing more than 1,000 counterfeit trademarks, police said. They were being held Thursday at the Los Angeles County sheriff’s Norwalk station in lieu of $10,000 bail.

Authorities could not say immediately what positions the two held with the company. Five other people were questioned and released, police said.

Foothill Ranch-based Oakley has been fending off counterfeiters since it made its first pair of sunglasses in 1984, spokeswoman Renee Law said. Last week, authorities seized about 100,000 counterfeit Oakley sunglasses in Mexico, the largest such bust outside the United States, she said.

In December, New York police shut down a massive counterfeit sunglasses ring that included more than 100,000 pairs of phony Oakley glasses, the company said. That sting also was conducted with the help of private investigators hired by Oakley, police said.

“We have an extensive network of intelligence agents in the field,” Law said. “It’s always been a focus of the company. I guess it’s the downside of being a very popular consumer brand.”

Oakley markets its trendy eye wear to athletes with claims that the glasses block harmful ultraviolet rays and can withstand a shotgun blast at 15 feet. The company tries to discourage counterfeiting by etching its logo into the lenses of the glasses.

The fake sunglasses confiscated Thursday in El Monte were designed to mimic a variety of Oakley styles, Law said.

In the New York case, counterfeit Oakleys were being sold on the street for a fraction of the retail price of between $45 and $250.

Kris Buckner, owner of Investigative Consultants, said “several thousand ear stems and other accessories or parts of sunglasses” were also discovered during Thursday’s raid.

“Oakley is a very popular brand,” Buckner said. “So . . . they are one of the top counterfeit sunglasses in the market.”

Detectives remained at the site for much of the day collecting evidence, police said. The investigation is continuing.