How Did The $470 Million Fake Nike Flow From Putian To The United States?

"Let the whole world wear designer shoes" is said to be the dream of every shoe maker in Putian. They seem to have done it. Nowadays, even if you buy Nike sports shoes in person, you won't have the chance to buy fake products.

In 2007, the New York police seized 300 thousand pairs of fake shoes from China, which made Putian's "fake shoes capital" famous overseas. When Nike employees accepted the New York Times, he estimated that 1 of the 3 pairs of Nike in the world were fake.

Over the past decade, countries have been making more and more efforts to crack down on fake shoes in Putian, but the industry of Putian's fake shoes has become more and more popular around the world. Recently, the US police seized the fake shoes worth up to 470 million dollars. This may be the largest counterfeit shoe smuggling case ever cracked in the United States.

Compared with the figure of 470 million dollars, what is more amazing is the process of police cracked. This is a story about crime, eavesdropping, undercover and other elements.

　　 How did the $470 million fake Nike flow from Putian to the United States?

According to official documents published in the United States, the key clue to breaking the fake shoe case was provided by a person familiar with the shoe smuggling industry. He was known as "CD" in the paper.

CD was not a conscientious report, but he had been arrested by the US police because of another case. In order to get a commutation sentence, he began to provide clues to the HSI and undercover his identity with smugglers.

According to a telephone number provided by CD, HSI has found a Chinese citizen of Zeng. In 2017, he once used this number to apply for a tourist visa in the United States. The application also provided an address in Shenzhen. Zeng claims to be an assistant manager of an investment company in Shenzhen, but in fact, the company does not exist.

Under the guidance of HSI, CD began to attract Zeng into the game step by step.

At the beginning of last year, CD met a person marked "1" in a shop in Queens, New York, and sent the telephone number of "No. 1" to a disposable phone and passed it to the "No. 2" contact in China. Shortly after, "2" revealed the whereabouts of Zeng to CD.

Soon Zeng took the initiative to contact CD and asked him to buy a disposable phone with California area code. Zeng also provided an e-mail password for CD to the company whose name is tehtungcorp.com. It is reported that the company has business in both China and the United States and has legal documents.

Zeng told CD that a container from Nanshan District, Shenzhen would soon arrive at Losangeles port. According to the declaration documents, the container is loaded with 11 tons of napkin.

Federal agents have been monitoring all communications between CD and Zengmou, and intercepted the containers when they arrived in California. They found two rows of boxes with ordinary shoes in the container, mainly for the purpose of deceive the public, and the rest of the boxes were all fake Nike shoes.

In order to catch a long line of fish, HSI did not check the fake shoes, but withheld a small number of fake shoes as evidence, so that they could track the destinations of these fake shoes.

The first transaction was successful, which allowed Zengmou to trust CD more. In April, he contacted CD again and replaced a company from Hongkong. The shipping documents showed 1134 boxes of glass vases, weighing nearly 9 tons, and actually a large number of fake shoes.

This time, HSI still did not find this batch of fake shoes. In July, a former technology was applied again. This time, except for Nike and LV's sneakers, HSI has initially confirmed that the end of these fake shoes is a warehouse in Broolyn.

After collecting enough evidence, the US police finally took action last December. In December 4th, Zengmou flew from South Korea to Las Vegas, USA. Two days later, the prosecution had signed the indictment and kept it strictly confidential.

In December 27th, Zengmou was arrested when he was preparing to board a plane at Dulles airport outside Washington, D.C. According to statistics, if the fake shoes sent to the United States were sold at the original price, the accumulated value would be as high as 470 million US dollars.

Over the past decade or so, the US Customs is no stranger to fake shoes from China. In 2018, the US police seized 380 thousand pairs of fake AJ from China, which were worth at least $73 million and arrested 5 suspects in New York.

In October last year, the US Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) also seized two containers from China in Losangeles's long harbor harbor, which contained nearly 15000 pairs of fake Nike sports shoes, similar to the tricks adopted by Zeng. The two containers declared the contents of napkins.

Although the amount of fake shoes caught by US police has been increasing, it has not been able to eradicate the root cause. There are more and more fake shoes in Putian, some of which are even hard to distinguish between the true and the false.

　　 Overseas industry chain of Putian fake shoes

Although there is no evidence that fake shoes from China to the United States come from Putian, according to Putian's popular saying, "9 pairs of shoes are shipped from 10 pairs of fake shoes in the domestic market, and one of the 3 pairs of Nike shoes in the world is from here. These fake shoes are probably not tied up with Putian.

The reason why Putian's fake footwear industry is repeatedly banned is that profits and lighter penalties are important reasons. An Interpol expert once said to the New York Times:

If a container of counterfeit shoes was seized, the goods were confiscated at most, and the customs office was on record. If it is 3 kilograms of heroin, the sentencing is 4 to 6 years' imprisonment. That's why smugglers expand their business scope.

VICE once interviewed a Chan, a fake shoe vendor from China, who was once a British medical student. He had already started selling Putian fake shoes in a documentary.

According to Chan, his customers all over the world, he usually through foreign forum Reddit to understand consumer preferences, the most can sell 120 pairs a day, the monthly income of up to 100 thousand dollars.

Chan, who has tasted the sweetness, simply "abandons the doctor from the fake". After graduation, he moved directly to Putian to expand the scale of his fake shoes business. When asked whether this kind of fake shoes would cause losses to some people, Chan replied.

Obviously, the first thing to think of is the brand side, but I think this also helps the brand side to enhance its popularity. This is actually a matter of win win among consumers, shoe vendors and brands.

The reason why Putian became the world-famous "fake shoes capital" is to start from the 80s of last century. With the advent of reform and opening up, many international sports brands will shift their factories from Taiwan to the mainland. Putian, near Taiwan, has undertaken many brands of foundry. Basically, Nike, Adidas, PUMA and other brand names all have OEM factories in Putian.

In recent months, according to the New York Times, the manufacturers of fake shoes have bribed factory workers to smuggle their sample shoes or design drawings. Therefore, sometimes fake shoes can even launch the market before the real products are listed.

Nowadays, the supervision of these factories has been much stricter, and it is almost no longer possible to smuggle design drawings. But fake shoe makers can also buy genuine shoes from shops, then disassemble them, learn about the structure and fabric of shoes, and create highly accurate molds, and produce fake shoes in bulk.

Some of the materials and tools used in the manufacture of fake shoes in Putian are exactly the same as those in the original factory, and even the foundry workers are the same group. This is also an important reason why Putian's fake shoes can be "true and false" from design to quality.

According to incomplete statistics, the annual output value of the footwear industry in Putian is as high as about 60000000000, and 500 thousand of the footwear industry is engaged in the footwear industry, accounting for nearly 1/6 of Putian's permanent population.

Many people in Putian rely on the manufacture and sale of fake shoes to make a fortune. This kind of interest relationship has increased the difficulty of fighting. "China Newsweek" once interviewed a boss of a shoe factory in Putian, arlin, who hinted to reporters that "the relationship between him and the manager has arrived" and revealed a disturbing fact:

90% of Putian people are related to this. How can we check it? Who is it?

It is reminiscent of the village Tat Zhai village in the TV drama icebreaking operation. It is also a "universal participation". It is also a lucrative profit. It also exports overseas. The difference is that the risk of making and selling fake shoes is much lower than that of making drugs.

According to statistics, sales of counterfeit goods worldwide exceeded 520 billion US dollars last year, accounting for 3.3% of the world's total trade volume. Counterfeit footwear has been one of the largest number of counterfeit products seized annually in the United States.

It is much more difficult for Putian to get rid of the stigma of "fake shoes city" than "let the whole world wear designer shoes".