In Hamburg, officers from the State Criminal Police Office (Landeskriminalamt, LKA) busted a 26-year-old suspect’s counterfeiting business, which he allegedly ran online and offline, in late November. According to official information, the officers seized such large quantities of counterfeit brand-name clothing that two trucks were needed to transport them off the site. In the run up, several tips had put the investigators on the trail of the accused. He allegedly sold the counterfeit items via the social media platform Instagram – and also ran a brick-and-mortar retail space in Hamburg’s Eilbek district. During two simultaneous raids of premises in Hamburg as well as in the city of Kiel, officials confiscated large amounts of unpacked counterfeits of popular clothing brands, as well as synthetic drugs and large quantities of cash.
In Berlin, investigators from the local State Criminal Police Office confiscated a staggering four tons of counterfeits. In mid-November, they raided a showroom for counterfeit designer handbags allegedly run by a 41-year-old woman in a three-bedroom apartment located in a prefab building in Berlin’s Marzahn district. The officials found the walls of the apartment tightly packed with counterfeit handbags from well-known luxury goods manufacturers, such as Chanel, Dior, Hermès, and Louis Vuitton. According to media reports, the suspect distributed the counterfeits via livestreams on the Internet.
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In western Germany, at Düsseldorf airport, customs officials seized counterfeits weighing more than 200 kilograms in a cargo shipment, as was released at the end of November. Investigators had identified the more than 400 counterfeits in a shipment that had arrived from Turkey back in early November and that was destined for Cameroon. During a routine check, officials had discovered counterfeit fashion items and accessories in several packages, such as fake bags, shoes, clothing, and other accessories of well-known manufacturers. These were of obviously inferior quality and suspiciously packed in bulk, authorities said.
