Those of you who have been following our series of blogs about counterfeit watches may be interested to know that it was reported in the press last week that a haul of over 800,000 fake watches have been seized by the Italian Police.
US Custom officials dispose of some fake watches
The fake watches, which are estimated to be worth somewhere in the region of 10,000,000 Euros, around £8.5 million, were seized from a shop run by five Chinese nationals in the Tuscany region of the country. The shop, located in Prato, south of the city of Bologna was being used to refurbish incomplete counterfeit watches that were imported from China en masse.
The fakes included copies of Rolex, Dolce & Gabbana, Mont Blanc and Omega watches all of which have been impounded by the local police force who also seized cars, computers and watch making equipment from the counterfeiters. It’s likely that these watches will be destroyed once they have been used as evidence in court against the counterfeiters.
Counterfeit goods, especially watches, are regularly seized by police, but it’s extremely unusual for such a huge quantity to be unearthed all at once. That fact that just a single counterfeiting operation was in possession of such a huge quantity of watches just goes to show how lucrative the market is for fake watches. Thankfully a huge number of inferior fakes will now be out of circulation thanks to Italian police force, but there are many other counterfeiters throughout Europe and the rest of World who are likely to be in possession of similar quantities of illegal, fake goods.