Federal officers at the Port of Louisville in Kentucky recently intercepted a shipment that contained 375 counterfeit watches. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price for the shipment would have exceeded $54 million if the timepieces had been authentic.
When U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers pulled the package for inspection, it was on its way from Hong Kong to a home in New York. CBP’s Centers of Excellence and Expertise, the organization’s trade experts, confiscated the fake Audemars Piguet watches for bearing counterfeit versions of registered and recorded trademarks after deeming them inauthentic.
“Intellectual property theft threatens America’s economic vitality and funds criminal activities and organized crime,” said Louisville’s Port Director, Philip Onken. “Our officers protect private industry and consumers by removing these kinds of shipments from our commerce.”
If at first you don’t succeed, fail and fail again
For some reason, counterfeiters continue to attempt to smuggle their fake watches through Louisville, despite the authorities catching them on multiple occasions.
In November 2025, CBP officers in Louisville confiscated two shipments of fake watches that, had they been real, would have been worth around $6.6 million. The CBP Centers of Excellence and Expertise discovered that the fake timepieces had unauthorized replicas of the trademarks of Richard Mille, Rolex, Hublot, Cartier, Swarovski, G-Shock, and Patek Philippe, which led to their seizure. Both shipments originated in Hong Kong and were addressed to homes in Doral, Florida, and Union City, Georgia.
Later that same month, CBP officers in Louisville seized a shipment of 160 fake Rolex Just Date watches packed in a parcel addressed to a residence in Houston, Texas. If the watches had been real and not fakes, that shipment would have carried a combined manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $2.57 million.
“Illegitimate sales are some of the most profitable transnational crimes. Counterfeiters sell inauthentic versions of popular products in response to trends, often through online sources,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement last year.