31,000 pairs of counterfeit Nike shoes recovered in Omaha

[nebraska_deputy]

Published Thursday July 3, 2008
31,000 pairs of counterfeit Nike shoes recovered in Omaha
BY DANNY VALENTINE
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

The Douglas County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday recovered 31,000 pairs of counterfeit Nike shoes, worth several million dollars.

About 7:45 p.m., a Douglas County K-9 unit pulled over a California man's westbound semitrailer truck on Interstate 80 near Harrison Street for speeding and following too closely, said Douglas County Sheriff Tim Dunning.

After the dog alerted officers, they discovered thousands of counterfeit Nike shoes in the 40-foot trailer, he said. Many were faux Air Jordans.

Dunning noted that there also were several plastic-wrapped objects, which he suspects may contain drugs.

A Nike counterfeit expert in California relayed some ways to determine if a shoe is counterfeit. After the shoes were found to be fake, the driver, 36, was arrested about 10:30 p.m.

He was arrested on suspicion of forgery, but Dunning said officials were consulting with other agencies regarding counterfeit charges. "We've never confiscated anything like this before," he said.

At $160 per pair, the sheriff estimated the street value to be around $5 million. The shipment was from New York; the destination was unknown.

[kirts410]

Fake Nikes r everywhere here in Baltimore but waayyyyy cheaper than retail and same quality . also i look at it as a good thing cuz there probably made in the US . lol :)

[Back to NYC]

Fake clothing, shoes, and handbags are huge business for organized crime - Gomorrah by Robert Saviano is a great book on the topic, as is McMafia by Misha Glenny. If Saviano is right with his numbers, organized crime in southern Italy makes more money off of fake fashion goods than it does off moving cocaine and heroin around Europe. Both books, especially McMafia, show how money made from sales of fake clothing and whatnot ends up moving around the world, getting laundered in places like Bermuda and Dubai, and then gets reinvested into not only legitimate business but also less legitimate things like terrorism.

[RwHJR3]

Yea I've had some counterfeit Nike cases and cases involving counterfeit high end handbags. We had someone come down and verify that they were fraudulent and then they estimated a value for us to charge them with. Pretty cool stuff. Of course everything came from NYC

[Taylor13]

Kudos to DCSO!