Half a million pairs of fake shoes seized

Anhui police have recently busted China’s biggest- ever case of counterfeit sneakers, seizing more than half a million pairs of sham shoes that were intended to be exported to the Middle East and Africa. The total value of the goods involved surpassed 600 million yuan ($ 87.3 million).

The seized shoes, although resembling the genuine ones, were made of poor quality materials, with the cost of each shoe being no higher than 20 yuan, the CCTV News reported on Thursday.

Distributors could get these shoes with an additional payment of 2 or 3 yuan, and then export them to world markets including those in the Middle East, with a price tag of no less than 100 yuan. Compared with the genuine ones priced around 300 to 400 yuan, such fake shoes have occupied much of the market share, seriously damaging the trademark owners’ brand reputation and profits, according to the report.

The police from Bengbu, East China’s Anhui Province received reports from Nike Sports China in December 2015, which said they had found a great number of counterfeit shoes resembling one of their branded products in the Middle East countries.

The counterfeit goods were labelled as being made in countries like Vietnam and Malaysia, but were in fact made in the neighboring area of Bengbu.

The police spent a month working on the lead given by Nike and finally located the concerned shoe factory named Jinfeng, which is a subsidiary of Feiyu Group, and identified the major suspect, surnamed Dai.

According to the police, Dai had previously been given a suspended prison term of two years for manufacturing counterfeit shoes in 2008.

Since the factory was established in 2012, its fake products have been widely distributed and dominated the fake goods markets in areas including the Middle East and Africa, the police said.