Friday, September 18, 2020

Dulles CBP Officers Seize Nearly $3 Million in Counterfeit Consumer Goods

On September 15, 2020, CBP officers at Washington Dulles International Airport checked those boxes when they seized nearly $3 million in counterfeit consumer goods from China.

The shipment, which arrived on August 22, and destined to a drop shipper in Dallas, was manifested as “sticker storage bag.” The shipment consisted of 74 boxes that included 4,213 belts of various designer brand names, 176 Louis Vuitton handbags, 39 Gucci shirts, 37 pairs of Gucci pants, and six Louis Vuitton shirts.

CBP officers detained the shipment August 24 as suspected counterfeit goods. CBP’s Consumer Products and Mass Merchandise Center of Excellence and Expertise and the Apparel, Footwear and Textiles CEE, the agency’s trade experts, worked with trademark holders and verified that all 4,471 products were counterfeit. They appraised the products at $2,950,479 manufacturer’s suggested retail price, if authentic.

On a typical day in 2019, CBP officers seized $4.3 million worth of products with Intellectual Property Rights violations.

CBP officers and Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) agents seized 27,599 shipments containing counterfeit goods in Fiscal Year (FY) 2019, down from 33,810 seizures in FY 2018. However, the total estimated manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of the seized goods, had they been genuine, increased to over $1.5 billion from nearly $1.4 billion in FY 2018.

E- Commerce sales have contributed to large volumes of low-value packages imported into the United States. In FY 2019, there were 144 million express shipments and 463 million international mail shipments. Over 90 percent of all intellectual property seizures occur in the international mail and express environments

The People’s Republic of China (mainland China and Hong Kong) remained the primary source economy for seized counterfeit and pirated goods, accounting for 83 percent of all IPR seizures and 92 percent of the estimated MSRP value of all IPR seizures.

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