7000 Fake Rolex Watches Crushed By US Law Enforcement

by Ariel Adams (RSS feed)
May 26th 2010 at 6:01PM

If there is anything that watch brands hate more than a bad economy, it is fake watches. Asia pumps out fake watches faster than ever, and Swiss watch brands have been lobbying lawmakers and law enforcement all over the world to help out. First of all, fake watches are illegal. As far as watch brands are concerned, they are as bad as hard drug trafficking. While replica watches (and other luxury goods) don't represent a violent crime, they are very damaging to the luxury goods economy, and are severe infringements of intellectual property rights. For a long time many Asian countries (especially China) have a bad reputation for utterly disregarding intellectual property rights. It is hard enough to enforce such laws in those countries, but when the goods travel here, the US is pissed off.

A major dealer of fake luxury goods including Rolex watches who was arrested last year had his good endure a unique public spectacle. The take down was operated by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), who apparently worked closely with Rolex. The arrest last year was after years of investigation and gathering evidence. The culprit was one Binh Cam Tran of Pennsylvania. After importing the parts for the fake watches, the replica timepieces were assembled in his home outside of Philadelphia. Tran is currently serving 6 years in jail and has been ordered to pay over $2 million dollars to Rolex USA.

What you see above is a steamroller crushing 7000 confiscated fake Rolex watches that were seized as part of the Tran investigation and prosecution. The fakes were roller over again and again as a message to would-be importers or producers of fake watches. I would think that owning a fake and having it break soon after would be deterrent enough. Although, a major concern when it comes to replica watches are when they are passed-off as authentics. This harms the luxury economy as well as brands much more than when people knowingly purchase fake goods.

In the past luxury goods had a powerful weapon on their side - the mere fact that their goods were hard to make, used expensive materials, and hard to come by. Fakes have been a problem for as long as there was a luxury industry, but the distribution power of the Internet, as well as increasingly sophisticated techniques by replicators have compounded the problem. It calls into question the very definition of luxury, and whether something that can be reproduced so easily is still luxury. Rolex has a product that is very hard to fake well enough to trick educated watch lovers. Others... may be fooled.

My advice to anyone interested in purchasing luxury goods is to educate yourself before getting anything. Learn why a brand is considered luxurious, what makes their product special and why people like their products. A good design is easy to copy, but quality and construction is not. Know what the real thing is like before investing in one yourself. Through this education process you'll also learn if that item you are lusting for is even worth paying for in the first place (I am talking to you high margin luxury sunglasses makers!).

Ariel Adams publishes the luxury watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.

Tags: 7000, counterfeit, destroyed, fakes, ICE, replicas, Rolex, watch

Filed under: Timepieces / Watches

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Reader Comments (Page 3 of 4)

texvoodoo2 May 29th 2010 11:47AM

Funny how U.S. Immigration and Customs can intercept 7000 fake Rolex watches, but can't seem to intercept the thousands of illegal mexicans who spill across our southern border every single day.

SR May 29th 2010 11:56AM

This is a little off base about the watches But I thought of a good plan US Citizens should move to Mexico and take up citizenship there and then sneak back across the border as an Illigial imagrant.
Then we would have more rights and support and get taken care of for free by the Goverment and have the Human rights groups to fight for our rights

l1705 May 29th 2010 1:13PM

Franklin
, Your friend is full of crap. Read the lastest issue of Watch Time magazine. There is an entire article on making the movement of a Rolex Daytona. They make all there own materials. They even have their own foundry to process their own gold. Every movement is assembled by hand.
Its all done in Switzerland. A long way from China.

Jimbo May 29th 2010 1:44PM

Remarks like this just go to show that with the annonymity of the internet, people aren't at all afraid to show just how ignorant they are.

ENRIQUE IGLESIAS May 29th 2010 1:54PM

A few years ago; my wife and I were standing in line in the Rolex Repair Shop on the second floor of the Rolex Building at the start of the Rue de Rhone... We were next in line when a Dolly Parton look alike and her very tall boyfriend wisked in front of the line and in a very Texas Twang announced to all that he very upset with Rolex as his $90,000. diamond encrusted watch was not keeping time... The repairman in his white frock coat looked at me and I told him that I was fine and I wanted to watch the 'casino' as you can imagine the gentleman from Texas was asked to turn over his watch and the repairman put it on the special machine behind him and after a few minutes took the watch off and dropped it into the trash can; whereupon, the gentleman from Texas starting screaming about how he was going to sue the pants off the repairman and Rolex... The repairman calmly told the gentleman that the watch was 'Faux', whereupon, I had to translate to the gentleman from Texas that it meant "False" and that it was a crime to be caught with a "Faux" mount in Switzerland; once it sunk into his head that he had purchased a Texas Timex he and his Dolly Parton lookalike tried to walk out under the carpet as they had created such a wonderful American impression on all who were waiting while the play moved on...

ronald May 29th 2010 2:15PM

there just jelous someone making money of riplicas like toys with a c in the circle there all riplicas not like there selling it for the same price as rolex watches. one way to spot a fake rolex is rolex watches second hand dont tick the turn at a steady pace fake ones tick

Chip May 29th 2010 4:01PM

Not the good fakes from China. My sister got one and took it to a the Rolex shop and they had to take it apart to tell it was a fake. That crap they are selling on Canal Street may tick, but I have seen some that you can only tell the difference by opening them up. For Rolex to go after this guy, I bet that is just what he had.

Bob May 29th 2010 2:42PM

I bought a Rolexx (mine is spelled with two x's) from nice young black man on Canal St. in New York City for $25.00 (he let me have it for this price--the normal price was $100) as a special deal. I'm sure mine is genuine, isn't it?

Ralph May 29th 2010 2:50PM

Hey Al, YOU discovered the graviton?? You need to hire a good publicist & get the word out, a lot of folks have been in the dark. So far, what seems to be known is on Wickepedia------- in physics, the graviton is a hypothetical elementary particle that mediates the force of gravity in the framework of quantum field theory. If it exists, the graviton must be massless (because the gravitational force has unlimited range) and must have a spin of 2 (because the source of gravity is the stress-energy tensor, which is a second-rank tensor, compared to electromagnetism, the source of which is the four-current, which is a first-rank tensor). To prove the existence of the graviton, physicists must be able to link the particle to the curvature of the space-time continuum and calculate the gravitational force exerted.

Gravitons are postulated because of the great success of quantum field theory (in particular, the Standard Model) at modeling the behavior of all other known forces of nature as being mediated by elementary particles: electromagnetism by the photon, the strong interaction by the gluons, and the weak interaction by the W and Z bosons. The hypothesis is that the gravitational interaction is likewise mediated by a – yet undiscovered – elementary particle, dubbed the graviton, instead of being described in terms of curved spacetime as in general relativity. In the classical limit, both approaches give identical results, which are required to conform to Newton's law of gravitation.[4][5][6]

However, attempts to extend the Standard Model with gravitons have run into serious theoretical difficulties at high energies (processes with energies close to or above the Planck scale) because of infinities arising due to quantum effects (in technical terms, gravitation is nonrenormalizable). On the other hand, the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible at such energies, so from a theoretical point of view the present situation is not tenable.[7] Some proposed models of quantum gravity[8] attempt to address these issues, but these are speculative theories

mike manning May 29th 2010 3:34PM

I have a rolex marina fake and a freind has a real one which he paid $ 8,000.00
for, we placed them on a table when he turned around he could not tell them apart,
His comment oh S--T. Ps I paid $ 200.00 for mine on line.

Chip May 29th 2010 3:49PM

It would be nice if the US could just stop goods from China entering the US but we can't. We can't get rid of the fake watches, the toys with lead, or the drywall that has tainted homes because when the US got in bed with China, and took all that money, they let China do whatever they want and have yet to hold them accountable for it.

It puzzles me though that they would set up a sting for fake watches but do absolutely nothing when immigration is a far more serious problem. Terrorists constantly planning attacks but hey at least you got those watches. How about setting up a sting to catch Bin Laden!!

trop10 May 29th 2010 5:07PM

Who cares?

Robert May 29th 2010 6:06PM

Here is the best part. The fake rolexes are usually much better watches than the real ones. Rolex is the biggest ripoff in the watch industry and they have been sticking it to us for years. I own 3 knockoffs and they all have outlasted my neighbors so called real rolexes. And besides that rolexes are SOOOOOOO LAST DECADE. They were costing folks more money to service than it would to buy a GOOD watch. The Asians labot is so much cheaper and so much better than our american overpriced labor that produces way below average quality. Send me more knockoffs PLEASE and keep the rolexes for yourself.

mcclusky72112 May 29th 2010 10:15PM

I am addicted to a watch or clock, don't know why but I am. I agree that knock-offs of any kind need to be destroyed and the responsible party should have to pay damages.
But Using a steam roller to destroy them, which would also require a steam roller operator, when the who mess could have been dumped in the sea and would have required one person 5 minutes. I just think with all the problems we have at our borders the amount of man power and money could have been better spent.

ROBERT BOCK May 31st 2010 7:15AM

I LOVE MY FAKE WATCHES , MAKES ME FEEL GOOD KNOWINGLY HAVE A NAME BRAND AT A COST THAT THE WORKING MAN CAN AFFORD .SAME WAY WITH SUNGLASSES . ITS NO DIFFERENCE THAN VOTEING FOR A FAKE PRESIDENT

Carlo May 31st 2010 8:48AM

These are natural problems and challenges for a growing world. People, want progress, pay the price. Want honesty, quit being a crook. Every, religion, race, color or creed has their, golden rule. Try following the one you have.

Jerry Wimberly May 31st 2010 8:58AM

The corporations that ru(i)n America do not want the average joe to share in their life of "Filthy" wealth. I say screwem. My cheap Rolex looks really nice and I can now ride trhough the Hamptons without being arrested!

Beel May 31st 2010 10:38AM

Sorry Westparkin, you sound like an idiot. You really don't know what you're talking about. Just blabbing.

Karen May 31st 2010 10:47AM

I am just one of those "common folk" who does't give a rats bottom about all that "glitter". My computer has a clock, my car has a clock, my kitchen has a clock on the wall and the office I work in does too. So why do I have to be a "slave" to all that other balogne? Those are my "intellectual rights" and I am sticking to them!

Karen May 31st 2010 11:03AM

I am just one of those confident "common folk" who doesn't give a rats bottom
about all that "glitter". If I need to know the time, my computer has a clock, my car has a clock, my kitchen has a clock on the wall and the office I work in
does too. I choose not to be a "slave" to all that balogne, Those are my "intellectual rights" and I am sticking to them! But if people need to pretend, whatever. To me, it's more of what's inside the packaging.

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