Designer watches seized in Louisville would be worth $81 million if they were real
If they weren’t fake, the thousands of Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Cartier, Gucci and Richard Mille watches seized in Louisville over the past six months would be worth more than $81.5 million.
Instead, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a news release that the 3,229 timepieces they collected between October and March are “cheap, gaudy, and worthless.”
Most of the shipments, heading to addresses all over the country, were coming from China.
“E-Commerce sales have contributed to large volumes of low-value, small packages being imported into the United States,” the agency said in the release. “Over 90 percent of all counterfeit seizures occur in the international mail and express environments which are channels that small, e-commerce packages destined for U.S. addresses travel through. Many of these shipments contain counterfeit goods that pose the same health, safety, and economic security risks as large, containerized shipments. Make sure to shop from reputable sources online.”
Counterfeit goods may help fund organized crime and can be “potentially dangerous,” said the agency, which has launched a public awareness campaign about the topic.
Last month, the customs office announced that its officers inspecting packages at the Express Consignment Operation hub in Louisville seized three packages between March 8 and 9 that contained designer jewelry that would have been valued at $4.55 million if it had been genuine. One shipment contained 37 counterfeit watches being shipped from Hong Kong to Canada; another going from Hong Kong to Miami contained 1,034 counterfeit jewelry items, including necklaces, bracelets and rings; and a third package being shipped from United Arab Emirates to a California residence contained “just one Richard Mille watch with a MSRP of over 2.25 million, too bad it was a counterfeit.”
Customs and Border Protection said it seized 26,503 shipments that contained items that “violated intellectual property rights” nationwide in fiscal year 2020.
“Legitimate cross-border trade powers the U.S. economy,” LaFonda D. Sutton-Burke, Director of Field Operations in the agency’s Chicago Field Office, said in the release. “As trade grows at unprecedented rates, our officers are working hard to identify threats and shut down illicit suppliers.”
