The 15 Biggest Raids on Counterfeit Goods in Recent History

The biggest raid on counterfeit goods, from Nikes to Louis Vuittons, in recent history.

Oct 18, 2014
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For many of us, stunting is a habit. Unfortunately, a never-ending influx of luxury goods is out of the question for 99 percent of the world simply because the funds to support such a luxe lifestyle are only afforded to a select few. This is where the counterfeits come in; Jimmy Choons and Nkie shoes look almost as good as the real thing but cost a fraction of the price. Bootlegs are driving a multi-billion dollar industry of their own.

Given the billions of dollars at stake for the companies that actually design these products, government agencies are pressed to shut down these operations, leading to some impressive raids over the years. Ranked in order of total value, here are The 15 Biggest Raids on Counterfeit Goods in Recent History.

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Date: November 2010

Value of Seized Goods: $10 million

Harwin Street is Houston’s destination for finding inexpensive goods, specifically, cheap versions of Rolex watches, Nike shoes, and a range of designer handbags. The place is well known by tourists looking to get a good deal, and police who know a deal too good to be true when they see it. A raid in November 2010 resulted in an especially large haul, three trucks worth of items valued at $10 million, as well as the closure of three businesses that were selling the illegal merchandise. To put that dollar value in perspective, Houston’s local Fox station reported that “$23 million in counterfeit products” were confiscated in all of 2012, meaning this raid alone would have been almost half the year’s total.

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Date: December 2013

Value of Seized Goods: At least $10 million

A modest T-shirt store in the middle of a mall in East Point, Georgia served as a front for a multi-million dollar counterfeiting operation. The store was stuffed with cheap knock-offs of Michael Kors, Louis Vuitton, and Coach purses, but an operation of this scale required more space. The store operators solved this problem by putting up multiple walls behind their storefront. “It was like a maze to get back to where they had the items secured,” said Cliff Chandler, the lieutenant working the case. The labyrinth was accessible only through the shop, and mall owners had no idea of its existence.

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Date: August 2010

Value of Seized Goods: $12 million

Operation Fire Sale, a national crackdown on counterfeit items, went into action in states all over the country, with the L.A. raids turning up the majority of bootleg goods ($12 million of the approximate $16 to $20 million of the nationwide total). Investigators can thank Santee Alley, a Los Angeles street touted for its bounty of bootlegs, for the sizable bump in the net value of goods seized. Authorities found fake shoes, sunglasses, watches, jewelry, blue jeans, T-shirts, and purses knocking off high-end brands, such as Burberry, Hermès, Chanel, Nike, and Ray Ban. The total price came to around $12 million worth of goods seized. Thirty people in L.A. ended up being arrested, one in particular for shilling Ed Hardy T-shirts, which may be the saddest way to go down.

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Date: December 2004

Value of Seized Goods: $12 million

Most bootleg items skew towards designer women's handbags and shoes, but what about the dudes that are ballin’ on a budget? Well, $12 million worth of imitation Sean John, RocaWear, Reebok, Nike, NBA-related merchandise, and Timberland was seized from a veritable gangster’s paradise in midtown Manhattan in 2004. In addition to the confiscation of goods, the entire building was shut down due to unsafe conditions .The operation was the biggest counterfeiting raid in NYPD history.

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Date: August 2008

Value of Seized Goods: $15 to $20 million

The largest warehouse raid in the history of Ohio happened in Youngstown. Investigators followed a box van that led them straight to where the bootleg items were stockpiled. At the warehouse, authorities found at least $15 million worth of clothing and accessories falsely labeled as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Ed Hardy, John Deere, as well as items being passed off as official NFL, MLB, and The Ohio State University merchandise. Three former Brooklyn residents led the counterfeit ring. Chalk it up to city slickers corrupting those pure Midwestern values.

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Date: August 2012

Value of Seized Goods: $18 million

One of the biggest confiscations of illegal goods was made up entirely of one single, coveted product: Christian Louboutin shoes. Custom agents at the Los Angeles/Long Beach seaport found 20,457 pairs of the designer’s famed red bottoms coming from China, which set off some alarm bells for the fashion-savvy authorities who knew that authentic Loubs are made in Italy. The massive shipments of shoes would have been sold on illegitimate websites, but instead every last pair was burned, sending out a smoke signal that was rivaled in intensity only by the sounds of basic girls everywhere weeping.

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Date: April 2009

Value of Seized Goods: $20 million

A massive $20 million bust in Red Hook, NY included an assortment of knock-offs, with 123 storage bins full of fake Prada and Coach bags, as well as knock-off Ralph Lauren clothes. However, the storage bins also held 17 very special pairs of fake Nike sneakers with images of President Obama plastered on them with the phrases “Yes We Can,” and “Change” from his Presidential campaign.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes took the production of the shoes hardest, saying, “It’s frankly just disrespectful to have the president of the United States depicted on these sneakers. Just absolutely disgraceful.”

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Date: October 2014

Value of Seized Goods: $22 million

The most recent case to make this list involved $22 million worth of high-quality knock-off goods. Authorities from the Bureau of Customs raided eight warehouses in Manila in the Philippines and unearthed a trove of imitation handbags from high-end labels, including Hermès, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Burberry. The fake bags, which were made by taking generic items and then later having the brands’ logos attached to them, were allegedly nice enough to be passed off as authentic. Inspectors will take inventory of the bags before they are destroyed, the same fate that all counterfeit goods meet, no matter how well made they are.

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Date: June 2014

Value of Seized Goods: $27 million

An operation in Alperton, a district in northwest London, was so wide-reaching that for years it actually required a corporate-style name, Grover International Limited. The company lived up to its moniker, too, as founders Nirmon Grover and Ajit Arura shipped their illegitimate products all over Europe and China. Officers from the investigating body in London, Brent and Harrow Trading Standards Service, called it the most sophisticated operation they have ever come across. The raid of Grover International Limited’s storage unit discovered the largest haul of counterfeit goods ever seized in the UK. Among the knock-offs were Nike sneakers, Ugg boots, Louis Vuitton bags, and Rolex watches.

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Date: July 2012

Value of Seized Goods: $28.7 million

U.S. Customs and Border Protection confiscated 1,120 fake Louis Arden and Piguet watches at a port in Laredo, TX. The knock-off watches were worth almost $30 million. Considering that $186,990,133 worth of watches and jewelry were seized, according to Homeland Security documents, globally in 2012, this bust alone made up 15 percent of that figure.

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Date: May 2014

Value of Seized Goods: $30 million

The raid on Lawrence Flea racked up $30 million in seized goods, the largest ever haul in Massachusetts’ history. The flea market sold various counterfeits of Michael Kors, Nike, Louis Vuitton, and Ugg.

James Fitzpatrick, the police chief at the time, delivered one of the saddest quotes to come out of all these raids, saying, “We didn’t expect it to be this wide-ranging. We expected a couple dozen vendors, but I think they were ramping up for Mother’s Day.” It’s painful to imagine how many moms in Massachusetts had to hear the excuse that they weren’t getting a present this year because the market that sold fake Uggs and Michael Kors got shut down. SMH, step up your game, fellas.

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Date: May 2012

Value of Seized Goods: $47.3 million

A two-and-a-half year investigation by ICE, the acronym for the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement, concluded with the seizure of $47.3 million worth of bootlegs, the single largest total of confiscated goods at a flea market, from the Patapsco Flea Market in Southwest Baltimore. Authorities wrangled together imitation Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel, Lacoste, Ralph Lauren, and North Face. Not even local Baltimore performance apparel brand Under Armour was safe from counterfeiters. Baltimore, is nothing sacred?

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Date: August 2010

Value of Seized Goods: $100 million

This colossal raid is a true testament to patience. Custom agents initially intercepted a shipping container at an Oakland port with 50,000 counterfeit items. Instead of seizing the items, agents let the shipping container go and launched a two-year investigation that tracked the goods to their eventual destination. Investigators followed the imitation items to a row of stores at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, a famous tourist attraction known for its colorful shops. After running a sting operation for two years at the Fisherman Wharf stores, investigator’s patience was rewarded with the largest-ever bust of retail counterfeiters. 230,000 fake items, almost five times as many as were originally discovered at that Oakland port, including counterfeit Oakley, Nike, Armani, and Louis Vuitton totaled $100 million.

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Date: September 2014

Value of Seized Goods: $163 million

If there’s one brand that counterfeiters just can’t seem to get enough of it’s Louis Vuitton. Whether it’s the easy-to-imitate “LV” logo or an undying market for the high-end bags, almost all of these counterfeit cases include the French fashion house. So, it’s only fitting that the second largest bust involves over a little more than $160 million worth of the highest-quality Louis Vuitton knock-offs. 

The crime network working out of southern China’s Guangdong Province used a VIP customer’s access to get new products as soon as possible. They studied the new bags to see how it was produced, and then imitated the bag’s design exactly. These bootleg bags even came with their own fake certificates of authenticity. What’s that phrase again? Imitation is the sincerest form of getting arrested, or something like that.

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Date: November 2006

Value of Seized Goods: $490 million

The world’s largest haul of counterfeit goods includes the holy grail of sneakers: Nikes. A customs department in Hamburg, Germany found the shoes in 117 shipping containers coming from China and being sent to addresses around Italy, Austria, and Hungary. Joining the 945,384 pairs of counterfeit Nike sneakers were 105,000 fake adidas and Puma shoes, which were valued at $490 million. All of the goods were sorted and eventually incinerated.

We realize the Nikes were fake, but damn, that’s a whole lot of kicks to see go up in smoke.

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