Counterfeit goods ‘fuelling organised crime profits’

PEOPLE buying box sets of The Sopranos and other hit TV series for a knockdown price at street markets and car boot sales are likely to be contributing to organised crime, according to customs investigators.

Customs officers seized thousands of counterfeit DVDs in the run-up to the Christmas and New Year, a lucrative time for opportunistic and organised criminals.

“While many people view counterfeiting as a soft victimless crime, it is a very lucrative industry for organised criminals,” said a customs spokeswoman.

As well as The Sopranos, other popular DVDs in the counterfeit market this year are box sets of Friends, Desperate Housewives, Star Trek and Buffy.

Figures for the busy months leading up to Christmas are not yet available from Customs, but more than 5,000 counterfeit DVDs were seized last year.

And it’s not just fake DVDs that are swelling the counterfeit market, which encompasses everything from mobile phone accessories, to watches, to clothes and shampoo.

Other items seized were razor blades, batteries, lighters and glasses.

Customs officers have also seized huge quantities of fake designer clothes, jewellery and watches, including Abercrombie & Fitch, Calvin Klein, Rolex, Georgio Armani, Chanel, Lacoste, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior.

Vast quantities of sportswear has also been seized, including Nike runners and Premiership soccer jerseys, such as Liverpool and Manchester United.

Figures for 2005 showed there were 326 seizures involving 622,120 items, with a value of €2 million. Of these there were:

* 67 seizures of DVDs, involving 5,022 items, with a value of €150,000;

* four seizures of mobile phone accessories, made up of 1,360 items, with a value of €150,000;

* 14 seizures of watches and jewellery, involving 687 items, worth €485,000; and

* 61 seizures of sportswear, comprising 4,628 items, with a value of €365,000.

Up to September last year, customs officers made 137 seizures, totalling more than 6,500 separate articles with a value of €618,500.

Noel Byrne, national Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) co-ordinator of Customs Investigations and Prosecutions Division, said the bulk of the seizures would come in the final quarter in the run-up to the festive season.

He said the trend in recent years was away from big commercial seizures to the postal and courier system.

“The majority of counterfeit detections are made at the parcel post depot and the airports,” said Mr Byrne. “The big commercial stuff, that we’ve seen over the last number of years, that seems to have gone back.”

He said commercial seizures this year involved razor blades, batteries, lighters and sunglasses.

He said there were customs staff at the main parcel depots, where they watched out for post based on risk profiling and intelligence.

He said people often used the same address, but separate names and that some people were repeat offenders, suggesting the trade is for commercial, and not personal, use. These items typically end up being sold in markets and car boot sales, which gardaí monitor.

Mr Byrne said counterfeiters were also using courier companies, mainly for smuggling commercial quantities of items.