ALL OF THE clothes in this picture are counterfeits.
The Abercrombie and Fitch clothing looked real to the naked eyed, felt authentic and came in plastic bags with the company logo on them.
The only way to spot their inauthenticity was to look at the labelling as well as some of the stitching.
They were part of a court case taken against two men in Dublin yesterday, which came as the gardaí and Interpol launch a crackdown on intellectual property crimes.
Gardaí say that everything from household detergents to clothing to aeroplane parts are counterfeited, with the proceeds going back to organised crime.
Goods such as these are made in unregulated sweatshops in some of the world’s poorest countries.
It is estimated that around $600 billion dollars worth of world trade every year is counterfeit or pirated and author of Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, Dana Thomas, says that it is not a victimless crime.
“‘I remember walking into an assembly plant in Thailand a couple of years ago and seeing six or seven little children, all under 10 years old, sitting on the floor assembling counterfeit leather handbags,’ an investigator told me… ‘The owners had broken the children’s legs and tied the lower leg to the thigh so the bones wouldn’t mend. [They] did it because the children said they wanted to go outside and play.’”
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