US customs seizes 100 counterfeit Super Bowl rings
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced yesterday that it has seized 108 counterfeit Super Bowl rings shipped from Hong Kong.
The Super Bowl ring is an award given in the National Football League ( NFL) to the winners of the annual finale. Each ring usually includes the team name and logo of the winning team.
The Philadelphia Eagles won their first Super Bowl this year after defeating the New England Patriots 41-33. The seized rings included counterfeit logos of the Patriots.
According to the CBP, an authorised replica ring could be sold for $10,000.
The parcel incorporating the counterfeit rings purported to include alloy rings, and arrived from Hong Kong on June 18. The CBP was suspicious of the goods due to poor craftsmanship of the rings and, after notifying the NFL, the sports organisation confirmed that they were fake.
If they were authentic, the rings would have had a collective retail price of $1.1 million, according to the CBP.
“Customs and Border Protection officers are like offensive linemen in that [they are] both are on the frontline and work hard to protect something important,” said Casey Durst, CBP director of field operations in Baltimore.
Durst added: “We will remain vigilant and we will continue to advance our detection capabilities in order to secure our homeland and keep our communities safe and our economy prosperous.”
According to the CBP, on a typical day last year, officers seized $3.3 million worth of products that violated IP rights.
For the 2017 fiscal year, the number of goods seized by the CBP that violated IP rights increased to 34,143 from 31,560 the previous year. This represented an 8% rise in seized goods.
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