FIFAS, the French sporting goods industry association, cries victory in a case it initiated last January against a network of dealers who have been selling fake sports shoes over the internet in France and some other countries, making hefty profits on sales which reached lately an estimated average level of €5,000 per day. Many customers paid without even receiving the merchandise.
Working through three different virtual stores – epifa.com, lordfoot.com and konfidentiel.com - the dealers were offering interesting prices for shoes carrying such brands as Adidas, Nike, Puma, Le Coq Sportif, Timberland, And 1, Mizuno and Umbro. According to FIFAS, they had set up offshore companies to launder the money that they were making through the internet in such countries as Switzerland, Norway, Spain and Lebanon.
Ten persons connected with this network in the Paris region have been interrogated so far in connecting with the case, and one of them has been placed in jail. The other are under police surveillance while the investigation takes its course.
Large quantities of fake sneakers continue to be tracked down at European customs points. At Bremerhaven, in Germany, 33 containers with 300,000 pairs of counterfeit Nike shoes from China were recently seized and destroyed.
In Beijing, meanwhile, a local court has fined three Chinese firms a total of 760,000 renmimbi (€73,650-$98,700) for selling products that were counterfeiting the Lacoste brand and logo. One of them is a manufacturer, Tai E, that had registered the brand “Golden Alligator” and put out a logo that was very similar to that of Lacoste. The only major difference was a design in the background, accompanying the image of the alligator, that would fade away after a while.
