Cops Confiscate $30K of Fake Apple Products in South Carolina Traffic Stop
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A July 16 traffic stop in Pee Dee, South Carolina has resulted in the seizure of a $30,000 haul of counterfeit Apple products, reports WMBF News. Deputies searched the car during the stop, discovering approximately $30,000 in counterfeit Apple goods, which included a large number of counterfeit AirPods.
Deputies arrested the driver of the vehicle, Umberto Cardinale, and charged him with the transportation and distribution of counterfeit goods valued at between $10,000 and $50,000, which is a felony. Cardinale could be hit with up to five years of imprisonment, a fine of up to $20,000, or both.
Cardinale has been booked into the Florence County Detention Center and is awaiting a bond hearing.
The value of the counterfeit goods confiscated in the arrest is far from the largest cache of fake electronic goods that have been confiscated.
In March, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) seized more than 20,000 counterfeit devices in two related raids in Belfast and Portadown.
While PSNI said that items included counterfeit iPhones, AirPods, and unspecified smartwatches, cellphones, and chargers, they did not provide details about the number of fake Apple products seized in the raids. However, a good number of the items shown in police photographs appeared to be pseudo-Apple products.
“Collectively, the products represent an estimated brand loss of 600,000 to Apple and other high street brands,” said DS Mason. He warned that criminals will “attempt to copy anything” and said that such counterfeit goods often fund organized crime.
In August 2023, the Feds raided California’s Long Beach Seaport and Ontario International Airport, resulting in the seizure of $400,000 in counterfeit Apple products, including fake Apple Watches and AirPods.
The faux devices arrived from Hong Kong in six separate shipments. The Feds intercepted the shipments during a single week in July 2023.
“If genuine, the seized products would have had an estimated manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $396,812,” said Jaime Ruiz of US Customs and Border Protection. Ruiz added that each item was “concealed in generic packaging.”
In March 2023, United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers inspected four shipments bound for Fairfax County, Virginia, finding and seizing over 1,000 pairs of counterfeit AirPods Pro 2 earbuds with a street value of more than $290,000 from Washington Dulles International Airport.
As they often are, the counterfeit products were shipped from China.
In 2021, Apple revealed that it has a dedicated team that focuses solely on finding counterfeits of the Cupertino firm’s products and stopping their sale. That same year, it discovered and had over a million listings for counterfeit Apple products deleted from multiple online marketplaces, including Facebook, Instagram, and others.
Related: Are Your AirPods Legitimate or Fake? Here’s How You Can Tell the Difference
“The safety of our customers is our first priority, and the risks associated with counterfeit products can be very serious. We have a dedicated team of experts constantly working with law enforcement, merchants, social media companies, and e-commerce sites around the world to remove counterfeit products from the market. In the last year, we have sought the removal of over 1 million listings for counterfeit and fake Apple products from online marketplaces, including Facebook and Instagram,” an Apple spokesperson told Bloomberg.
