Seoul Jongno Police Station Busts Gang Manufacturing and Distributing Counterfeit Precious Metals

A group involved in manufacturing and distributing counterfeit precious metals was caught in Jongno, Seoul.

The Trademark Special Judicial Police of the Korean Intellectual Property Office announced on the 15th that they have booked two individuals without detention on charges of violating the Trademark Act: Mr. A (50), who manufactured and distributed counterfeit precious metals in Jongno, Seoul, and Mr. B (51), a wholesale and retail merchant who distributed and sold them.

Image of a counterfeit Louis Vuitton ring seized by the Special Judicial Police for Trademarks of the Korean Intellectual Property Office. Provided by the Korean Intellectual Property Office.

According to the Special Judicial Police, Mr. A is suspected of manufacturing and distributing 737 counterfeit precious metal items such as necklaces and rings at a precious metal manufacturing factory located in Jongno-gu, Seoul, from December 2017 to September 2022.

The counterfeit precious metals manufactured and distributed by Mr. A bore famous overseas brand names such as Tiffany & Co., Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Chanel, with the genuine value of these items estimated at approximately 1 billion KRW.

In particular, Mr. A showed meticulousness by operating the factory without a signboard in a residential commercial building to evade law enforcement, and by possessing a small-scale furnace inside the factory to immediately destroy counterfeit goods during raids.

Additionally, to avoid detection, he created a so-called ‘production ledger’ assigning identifiable codes to the counterfeit precious metals and secretly promoted and conducted business targeting precious metal wholesale and retail stores.

Mr. B was found to have distributed and sold the counterfeit precious metals manufactured by Mr. A at a commercial building located in the Jongno precious metal district during the same period.

Precious metals have the characteristic of being easy to distribute in small quantities indoors due to their small volume relative to their high price. For this reason, most crackdowns on counterfeit precious metals begin with consumer reports recognizing the counterfeit products.

However, this crackdown is different in that the trademark police tracked for more than half a year to apprehend the retailer who sold counterfeit precious metals and the manufacturer and distributor who produced and distributed large quantities nationwide.

The Special Judicial Police also seized 475 items of 29 types, including counterfeit precious metals and molds used in their manufacture, during the crackdown.

Park Ju-yeon, head of the Trademark Special Judicial Police at the Korean Intellectual Property Office, said, “The significance of this crackdown lies in the fact that counterfeit goods were seized before they were distributed to wholesale and retail stores, and all molds used in manufacturing counterfeit products were confiscated.” He added, “The trademark police plan to continuously conduct planned investigations targeting wholesale and retail businesses and manufacturing factories in sectors with many counterfeit products to eradicate the distribution of counterfeit goods.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.