Counterfeit products are out there. Anyone who has walked the streets of New York City knows this. Anyone who has Googled Rolex, Cartier, or Louis Vuitton knows this (try it). One thing that we often fail to understand is the magnitude of the problem. There is an article in today’s Washington Post that sheds some light on the problem.
According to the article, a steamroller recently crushed 7,000 counterfeit Rolex watches seized from an individual named Binh Cam Tran, who is currently serving a six year sentence in federal prison for trafficking in counterfeit goods. Those 7,000 Rolex watches likely represent the tip of the iceberg – “Authorities say Tran fabricated hundreds of thousands of fake Rolex watches in his home near Philadelphia. Officials seized about 24,000 counterfeit watches and enough parts to create 1 million more.”
Am I reading this correctly? One man (and likely a few of his henchmen) has created hundreds of thousands of fake Rolex watches? And he had parts to create 1 million more?
And BTW – what did the authorities do with the remaining 17,000 counterfeit watches that they seized? Am I the only one that wants to know the answer to that question?
Check out the entire article along with some really cool pictures: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042701955.html
Makes you want to buy your pre-owned luxury watches from a trustworthy retailer, like eRelyx.
Tags: Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Rolex
[...] luxury watch market suffers from the same counterfeit issues. A few months ago I blogged about millions of dollars worth of counterfeit Rolex watches being confiscated and destroyed by [...]