In this latest case, the counterfeiting crew allegedly used slightly altered versions of actual company names to make their shipping paperwork look legit. Once the cargo cleared US customs, the 40-foot containers didn’t go to the addresses listed on the Nike Air Max 720 Mujer manifests—which falsely claimed the shipments were made up of everyday Nike Air Max 97 Womens household items like ventilation fans—but rather to various self-storage facilities in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island, NY, where the boxes of phony sneakers were broken down into smaller quantities www.johnmccarty.co.uk to be sold. Investigators eventually linked a total Nike Air Max 95 Dam of 129 shipping containers containing bogus shoes to the same organization.The network first appeared on law enforcement’s radar in February 2012, when CBP officers in the New York area seized a container loaded with counterfeit www.marianorberg.se sneakers coming in from China.Nike Air Force 1 Femme CBP made 16 identical seizures over the next several years—with, of course, unknown Nike Air Max 2017 Femme numbers slipping into the country undetected.

Finally, in October 2018, investigators picked up a crucial lead.That’s when an unidentified defendant who pleaded guilty to federal Nike Air Max 270 Dam counterfeiting charges began providing information to agents from www.jiridolezel.czHomeland Security Investigations (HSI), in hopes of getting a more lenient sentence. This person, who is named in court filings only as “CD,” for “cooperating defendant,” gave HSI a phone number for someone Adidas ZX Flux Dam they called Ray. Investigators checked the number Nike Air Odyssey Womens Mens against a government database and found it matched one submitted on a 2017 US tourist visa application submitted by a Chinese national named Qingfu Zeng.

On the application, Zeng provided an address in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China and claimed he was the deputy Nike Internationalist Dam general manager of an investment firm called Shenzhen Andreusen Investment Nike Air Max 720 Dam Co. Ltd. Quartz could not find a company by that name listed in public records.The complaint goes on to say that Zeng told CD that a 40-foot shipping container was set to arrive at the Port Nike Air Max 97 Dam of Newark, New Jersey on June 1. The shipping manifest said Nike Air Vapormax Dam the cargo—listed as 1,134 cartons of glass vases, weighing 8,970 kilos—was sent by a Hong Kong-based company called “Talent Succeed Ltd.” The contact number on the paperwork traced back to one of Zeng’s burner phones, Adidas NMD Dam not CYS Excel’s Baldwin Park, CA Nike Internationalist Womens headquarters.