According to Attorney Mr. Xinyu Lee in SSSPO (Stein Shostak Shostak Pollack & O'Hara, LLP) Shanghai branch who is specialized in U.S. Customs laws, U.S. Federal Government hand over three petitions to the court recently to indict 29 defendants who have the accusation of smuggling 950 batches goods to USA and dealing in copy commodities. The 29 defendants live in N.Y., New Jersey and California, including distributors, logistics worker, Customs-clearance, owner or manager of customs bonded warehouse and manager of customs inspection site and so on. And four of them were also charged with money laundering.
These goods mainly came from China. If they are genuine, it is estimated that the total value is approximately 700 million U.S. dollars. It is said that the smuggled goods consisted with fake Nike sports shoes, North Face jacket, Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel and Fendi handbags, True Religion jeans and so on. These goods entered to the United States via the ports of New Jersey, Texas and California, New York Container Terminal and the New York Kennedy (JFK) InternationalAirport.
U.S. Customs spent 19 months to investigate by many means, such as the information provided by the witnesses, the investigation provided by plainclothes police and the kinescope. Once the defendants’ conspiracy and money laundering were established, they could face a maximum term of imprisonment for five years to 20 years.
Officials of U.S. Homeland Security Department, Customs and the Federal Prosecutor's Office made statements after the prosecution of this case one by one. They reiterated the United States government’s determination of combating the counterfeit smuggle. Li Xinyu lawyers pointed out that from the name of the defendants which on the U.S. government’s indictment, there were many Chinese, such as Kwok Keung Wong, Longyi Wang, Danny Chan, Meng Zhang, Min Hua, Yao Chen.
In addition it was reported in the "U.S. Customs enforcement agencies seized a large number of clothing and footwear products" last September 8 that the case of contraband Nike products had made a new progress. According to the information provided by Li Xinyu lawyer that the five defendants in the case had managed to a plea agreement with the United States government. Two Chinese Wei Tung Lam and Sau Kuen Chan pleaded guilty to conspiracy of bribing a federal law enforcement staff and operating counterfeit goods.
U.S. Customs announced to uncover a case of smuggle counterfeit sports shoes in Tucson (Arizona) on Sep. 5th last year. The case is one of the largest smuggle trademark infringement cases in the history of the United States. The total value of these counterfeit Nike shoes and some other infringement products is more than 69 million dollars. The total number of containers is 78, and intercepted 62 containers infringement footwear products only on California and Texas customs. The smuggle group pretended to the Customs that they will re-transport those clothing and footwear products which made in China to Mexico via the United States. And after the goods entered into the United States, they bribed the officers to sign false export documents in order to let those smuggled goods can be sold in domestic market.
The members of this smuggle group are from Mexico, USA, Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong. The other three defendants in this case also made a plea agreement with the United States government earlier. The sixth defendant, Peng Liu who came from Hong Kong is still at large. And U.S. Customs suspected this person hidden in Chinese Mainland.
China and the United States recently signed a document called "the memorandum of strengthening the cooperation of intellectual property enforcement" to fight against the phenomenon of intellectual property infringement which happened between two countries. Please see the report "USA Detroit Customs Detained Fake Vanity and Fined 3Million USD" on our website on Jun. 19thhttp://www.chinaapparel.net/news/2007/2007-06-19/12272.shtml.There are some details about this situation.
