SouthFlorida.com | City Link Magazine

Nicole Swissa couldn't have picked a worse place to run her counterfeit-goods business. Specializing in bogus designer handbags, wallets and other accessories, Bag Beyond is located in the Hollywood Mall, a once popular but now somewhat forgotten shopping center directly across the street from the Hollywood Police Department.

Last month, following a six-week investigation into Swissa's business, Hollywood Police seized about 3,000 fake items from Bag Beyond, which is actually owned by Swissa's father, Aenri, and arrested Swissa, charging her with one count of vending counterfeit goods and one count of possessing counterfeits. She now faces 10 years in prison and $20,000 in fines. Detective Carlos Negron says the case is still under investigation. In Florida, selling counterfeit goods valued at more than $1,000 is a third-degree felony; if the goods are worth less than $1,000, it's a first-degree misdemeanor.

"The funny thing is, these items were taken from a regular store," Negron explains. "It wasn't a flea market."

The Police Department began looking into Swissa's business after it had received phone calls from people claiming the store was selling counterfeit merchandise. "We sent an undercover detective in, and she bought three knockoff bags for $100," Negron says. "After we confirmed that the purses were brand-name fakes, we made the arrest. These are items that if they were real, would go for 500 bucks or more."

The raid nearly emptied the store, whose inventory included hundreds of purses, shoes, wallets, suitcases, umbrellas and other items bearing the logos of Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Christian Dior, Coach and Chanel. "Some of the stuff looked so real, like the fake Rolex watches," Negron recalls, "and some of the stuff looked real cheap, like the fake Chanel bags. The stitching was all wrong, and you could really tell."

Many of these designer labels were being made in the store and stuck on the bags, Negron says. The police seized the fake labels, as well.

Some fake designer handbags can be spotted from a mile away, while others are so close to the real deal, you'd have to inspect them with a magnifying glass to know that they aren't. Counterfeit designer handbags are a big business these days. The World Customs Organization reports that nearly 7 percent of all products sold worldwide are fake.

"It's truly a global problem," confirms Darren Pagoda, a staff attorney for the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC). "A lot of the counterfeit items are being produced in China, but you can find counterfeit items in all 50 states. New York City has a particularly big problem with it."

The New York City Comptroller's Office reports that in 2003, an estimated $23 billion was spent on counterfeit goods in the city. This illegal trade cheated New York and its residents of more than $1 billion in tax revenue. Pagoda blames much of the city's knockoff problem on the large number of residents with connections to Asian counterfeiters.

However, Pagoda points out that designer handbags aren't the only things being counterfeited. Everything from apparel to entire cars is being imitated. "In China, there is an identical copy of a GM car being produced," he says. "They're also copying motorcycles."

But these items are not being made in the back room of someone's house. "Many of the people producing these counterfeit items run their own factories similarly to how the real manufacturers of these products do," Pagoda explains. "It's definitely a business."

Some counterfeit-producing factories reportedly employ children. Reports have also surfaced of al-Qaeda members selling counterfeit fashion and beauty goods to help fund the group's terrorist missions. The IACC states on its Web site, www.iacc.org, that a shipment of counterfeit shampoos, creams and perfumes on its way from Dubai to Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2002 was seized by Danish customs. The European Commission's Customs Coordination Office later confirmed that the sender of the counterfeit goods, which were supposed to end up in the United Kingdom, belonged to al-Qaeda. And during a 2002 raid in midtown Manhattan, a suitcase filled with counterfeit watches was confiscated along with several flight manuals for Boeing 767s, some containing handwritten notes in Arabic.

"Selling an identical copy of a registered trademark is illegal," Pagoda says. "Under federal statute, a counterfeit mark is a mark that's identical to a registered mark. If one letter is changed in a logo, it could be deemed 'confusingly similar,' and you could be sued civilly. However, counterfeiting is criminal, so you could be sued civilly also, depending on the charges."

Sellers of knockoff bags often hawk "confusingly similar" goods to circumvent the law, explains a Miami dealer who requested anonymity. "You try to change a letter in the logo or a strap," the dealer says. "I've sold Kate Spade knockoffs out in the open with a completely different label covering the name. I tell my customers when they get home to remove the label, because the real name is under there."

Many dealers, however, never even meet their customers, preferring to sell their goods on the Internet. Visitors to counterfeit-goods sites are often greeted with a warning not to enter the site if they are affiliated with or work for any designer. Many of these sites also cite the Internet Privacy Act of 1995, which the IACC says is merely a smokescreen and does not offer these counterfeiters protection.

"Just because these goods are sold on the Web doesn't make the practice legal," Pagoda emphasizes. "Criminal counterfeiting is illegal in the real world and on the Internet."

Some sites use pictures of real bags, which are taken right from the designers' actual Web sites. "I bought a bag a few months ago off a Web site selling fake Louis Vuitton bags, and I totally got ripped off," says a 22-year-old Fort Lauderdale woman who asked that her name not be used. "I thought I was getting a copy of the Louis Vuitton white Multicolore Speedy 30 bag. It looked so real in the picture, I figured it was worth $145, knowing the real one costs $1,670. My bag was seized by customs, along with a large shipment of the vendor's other merchandise. I contacted the vendor, and three months later, she mailed me a purse that was the same shape but had none of the same colors in the logo."

For every authentic bag sold on auction sites such as eBay, Craigslist and Ioffer, there are a hundred knockoffs. A Google search for "knockoff designer handbags" provides thousands of links to goods. Some sites even sell fake Louis Vuitton receipts, shopping bags and bogus user's manuals.

While a person can't be prosecuted for knowingly buying a fake designer bag or two, Pagoda says it is illegal to throw a "purse party" and sell them to friends. "Women have been arrested while throwing their own purse parties," Pagoda says. "Thousands of dollars have been seized from people's homes. A woman's Jaguar was even seized from her driveway after it was discovered that she had paid for the car with money collected from selling counterfeit purses."

An employee at Louis Vuitton, who requested anonymity, says people often come into her store with knockoff bags asking whether or not they are toting the real thing. "People say, 'Oh that's my bag over there,' and then, they'll ask us to put our product on the counter next to theirs," the employee explains. "We can't tell them if it's real or fake. All we can tell them is, 'It's not our product.' "

Some of the major handbag designers, such as Coach, have released specific instructions on how customers can turn in vendors who sell fake merchandise. "The counterfeiters illegally profit at the expense of Coach and affect the entire economy through lost revenues and taxes," reads a statement on the company's Web site, www.coach.com. "In addition, counterfeiters do not typically honor safety and environmental regulations, namely child labor and anti-sweatshop laws."

Coach also stresses that it does not sell merchandise through individuals, street vendors, unauthorized retail locations, Internet auctions or house parties. So if a Coach handbag is purchased anywhere other than in a Coach outlet or department store, chances are it's a fake.

Designer Kate Spade has issued a similar warning on her Web site, www.katespade.com: "Authentic Kate Spade products are not sold at 'purse parties,' flea markets, by street vendors, in New York's Chinatown neighborhood or Santee Alley in Los Angeles, in kiosks in malls or on auction sites."

Still, it's important to note that counterfeiters no longer fit the stereotype of the sketchy mobster who sells fake Gucci bags from the trunk of his Cadillac. In 2003, Brandon Goodrich and Dallas Cook, both 18 and fairly preppy-looking, were busted in Palm Beach Gardens for selling fake Louis Vuitton, Kate Spade and Christian Dior bags, belts, wallets and umbrellas at a purse party set up by undercover officers as a sting. Detectives seized 181 items -- which, if they had been authentic, would have been worth $45,000 -- and confiscated a sports car.

Even with the knowledge that buying designer knockoffs could be funding terrorism and forcing kids to work in sweatshops, many young women simply want the prestige that comes with carrying what looks like a high-end designer bag, regardless of the consequences. "I love the way designer purses look, but I can't afford one," says Jen, a 20-year-old student at Florida Atlantic University who refused to disclose her last name. "If I can find one that looks like the real one at half the price, then I'm going to buy it. I don't feel like I'm ripping Louis Vuitton off. They make plenty of money."

She clearly isn't the only person who feels this way. "There was a statistic that came out in the mid-'90s that said $350 billion a year is spent on fake goods," Pagoda says. "I think the problem is either stagnating or getting worse."

Dead giveaways

Don't be fooled by designer knockoffs. Look for these signs that a bag is not the genuine article.

While makers of counterfeit designer bags try to change the lining and features of their purses as often as the authentic designers do, people who don't want to be duped into buying a fake should be on the lookout for some dead giveaways.

Louis Vuitton does not hang price tags off its purses. Instead, a paper barcode is placed inside the bag. The designer also never places paper cards in the credit card holders of its wallets. Before buying a purse, check out a real one first and examine the colors, hardware, texture and size of the bag. Knockoffs often have a designer's logo on a style of purse that the designer doesn't make.

Louis Vuitton's Multicolore bag, designed by Takashi Murakami and Marc Jacobs, uses 33 different colors in its logo. And pay attention to the color of the leather strap on a Louis Vuitton. A real Louis Vuitton starts out light and gradually darkens over time.

Always pay close attention to the stitching. On a Kate Spade bag, the logo is stitched perfectly straight; it's not a sticker. Most designers stitch a simple label to the inside of their purses. On Chanel bags, however, the interior label is usually stamped and tends to match the color of the exterior. Study the material the bag is made from. A real Chanel Ligne Cambon multipocket bag, for example, is constructed from buttery lambskin leather, not vinyl.

Perhaps the best tip is to use common sense. If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. Remember, you get what you pay for.

-- Joanie Cox