By Danica Lo, Glamour
If you’ve ever walked down the street in a big, bustling, commercial city, chances are you’ve either seen or been approached by someone trying to sell you a counterfeit designer handbag. From Louis Vuitton to Goyard, Prada to Gucci, and even Coach and Kate Spade, if there’s a designer label, there’s going to be someone trying to knock it off.
Counterfeit handbags. Photo : REUTERS/Claro Cortes IV
And while an average, not-very-convincing faux bag may cost between $30 and $40 on the street, these days, there’s a more sophisticated counterfeit handbag industry manufacturing meticulously detailed counterfeits that are very nearly the real deal—and they’re charging upwards of $600 per purse.
Reportedly, these fakes often come from the actual production line the “real” handbags come from—and they’re so good, even experts can’t determine their authenticity. The U.S. government is hot on the trail of counterfeit bag makers. In 2012, U.S. Customs and Border Protection confiscated 537 cartons of designer knockoff handbags and other accessories at the Port of New York/New Jersey, while also in 2012, the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled in favor of Louis Vuitton Malletier SA and Louis Vuitton U.S. Manufacturing Inc. “in an unfair trade case alleging widespread counterfeiting and knockoffs,” according to WWD . And in the mother of all counterfeit arrests, in March 2012, federal authorities busted one of the largest counterfeit goods smuggling operations in history , involving fake products valued at more than $325 million!
Read the full story by Danica Lo from Glamour.
