U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at the Port of Louisville in Kentucky recently seized 200 luxury watches bearing counterfeit Audemars Piguet trademarks.
Audemars Piguet is a Swiss manufacturer of luxury watches. Many consider the company one of the “Big Three” of Swiss watchmakers, along with Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin. So counterfeiters, looking to capitalize on the company’s prestige, often manufacture and attempt to sell fake versions of their watches.
The shipment of counterfeit Audemars Piguet watches originated in Hong Kong and was en route to Illinois when CBP officers pulled the parcel for inspection. CBP’s Centers of Excellence and Expertise, the organization’s trade experts, declared the timepieces inauthentic and then confiscated them for bearing counterfeit versions of registered and documented trademarks.
The shipment would have had a total manufacturer’s suggested retail price of more than $28 million if the watches were authentic.
“Counterfeit goods are poor quality products costing U.S. businesses billions of dollars a year while robbing our country of jobs and tax revenues,” said Louisville’s Port Director, Philip Onken. “Officers are trained to identify illicit shipments and work diligently for American consumers by stopping the flow of unlawful trade.”
Last month, feds in Louisville seized even more fake watches
Last month, federal officers at the Port of Louisville in Kentucky intercepted a shipment that contained 375 counterfeit Audemars Piguet watches. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price for the shipment would have exceeded $54 million if the timepieces had been authentic. That shipment was on its way from Hong Kong to a home in New York.
Every year, customs officials seize tens of millions of dollars’ worth of counterfeit watches when smugglers attempt to ship them into the United States. The fact that smugglers continue to attempt to bring these fake watches into America, despite the massive amount of losses they suffer each year, makes one wonder how many millions of dollars’ worth of fake goods actually make it past authorities and into the country. Because if they didn’t succeed more often than authorities catch them, why else would they keep doing it?