dhs raided my store

reply to post by goou111


the craziest thing is that a lot of the subcontractors are the same that make the fakes and the real ones!

reply to post by Destinyone

The fact that you were punished in this way is indicative of new world order police action. Huge overkill for a minor infraction. Federal police on every corner. They probably knew you had purchased the Chinese stuff, when and how much. They can flag internet purchases and know who is buying what from who. It is important for you to get your story told in as many venues as possible.

It's good to know that our tax dollars are being used to protect corporate profits. Too bad DHS isn't as effective in fighting illegal immigration as they are illegal merchandise.

reply to post by goou111


you are a criminal participating in criminal activity.

this is the law. i do not make the law. why do you think you are above the law.

i don't care if you want to break the law, just don't look for sympathy when you get caught. you want someone to play a violin when you tell your sob story?

well, the soccer jersey's are from european and foreign teams.

i doubt homeland security is being paid to uphold englands and manchester united's trademark rights.

the question is, why is dhs acting as a corporate police force, being paid by tax payers to enforce billionaire sports teams and unions property rights.

there was no need for that. these sports teams and leagues should use their money, hire their own investigators and sue using their own lawyers for any loss of money or copyright infringement.

knocking over flea markets, instead of investigating terror cells. more lies and b.s.

For those indignant over the DHS pursuing such a 'trivial' issue, I don't really see the issue. It doesn't seem to be a stretch that large shipments from China are investigated for potential legitimate threats and issues. I imagine if it were one or two jerseys for personal use it would have stayed off the radar. Once it was noticed though, the fact is such knock offs are illegal, so it needed to be addressed. Additionally, quite often the profits from wholesale of the counterfeit goods are indeed being used to fund more sinister activities anyway.

I think it was addressed in a pretty mild manner rather than the usual extreme reaction we often see on here (OP wasn't assaulted or incarcerated - huzzah!). If you don't agree with copyright law, push for reform there, but that's a whole different issue. Until then, kudos to DHS for enforcing federal law without over the top antics.

reply to post by goou111


This is the great dichotomy of the American Free Market.

In order to HAVE a free market, the goods and services one DESIGNS, makes and sells
MUST have some legal protection from usurpation by those who wish to profit from the
efforts of others.

While I personally think DHS was a bit heavy handed in this case, I shall pose
a scenario which should give pause to those of you who partake in the buying
of counterfeit goods.

NIKE puts MILLIONS of dollars of DESIGN and marketing into jerseys and shoes.
In twenty years we went from runners that were just runners....to high tech foot comfort devices
that can absorb THOUSANDS of pounds of force to protect our foot bones AND keep
them warm, dry and fairly stink-free....THAT took incredible materials engineering and DECADES
of research and development.

NIKE SHOULD BE compensated for all the work they did to give YOU Joe and Jane America
a product that DOES THE JOB it was intended to do. EXPENSIVE? YES but they work.... but now
someone tries to shove a crate of knockoffs through the border and OOPS...someone forgot to check
that the blue dye that some cheap Chinese company bought from India contains left-over
Cobalt-60 or Strontium-90 which gives that fake shirt its blue and purple shine BUT with the
side-effect of irradiating your body with low-levels of long-term radiation eventually causing leukemia
(THAT IS A TRUE STORY!)...now you're selling kockoffs that are killing YOU and your customers!

You get what you pay for...and the problem is that YOU DON'T KNOW where your product is coming from
OR what it contains...Them cheap metal buckles or rivets?...they might contain cadmium or RADIOACTIVE
metals melted down from medical scrap. The fake jerseys...many low-in-the-manufacturing totem pole
asian firms use cloth that have been soaked in highly hazardous chemicals to soften the coarse
cloth...thus you'm have sodium hydrochloride residue on your jersey or caustic tannic acid STILL on the
leather coat slowly BURNING your skin or eventually giving you cancer. The colour dyes? Cobalt-xx
is left over from medical devices still give a Beautiful indigo colour...it's just that in ten years
you'll be getting leaukemia...and since those fake goods were mosty SMUGGLED in
customs never got a chance to use their radiation detectors or toxic residue samplers
so YOU and your "customers" get the short end of the stick.

AND for good measure...how about supporting AMERICAN JOBS by buying LOCAL rather
than foreign.....!!!!

Originally posted by WhoFeelsitKnowsit

Originally posted by goou111 i dont understand how they can leave the soccer that i told them was fake but take stuff i know was real.. and they took my till for the day ..

Nothing but thugs in suits with badges. Sorry this happened to you. Hope your store can recover.

To satisfy my curiosity, you said they were appraising the jerseys at 250 a piece. How many did they confisca..sorry I mean, steal?

edit on 9-12-2012 by WhoFeelsitKnowsit because: (no reason given)

187

Originally posted by PatrickGarrow17
reply to post by goou111

 

You were sort of stealing from the sports leagues/teams/brand of jerseys....

I mean I really don't blame you, it's not a huge crime. But you're not getting locked up, right? The teams that own the rights to these designs should protect their product.

Not really... Would those people have bought a jersey if they did not see them in the store for $35?

Originally posted by lacrimaererum
reply to post by goou111

 

you are a criminal participating in criminal activity.

this is the law. i do not make the law. why do you think you are above the law.

i don't care if you want to break the law, just don't look for sympathy when you get caught. you want someone to play a violin when you tell your sob story?

lol i didnt ask anyone for there sympathy just wanted people to know

Don't mess with the NFL & their money. They are notorious for going after people pirating their products. Of course they didn't take the soccer gear cause nobody cares about soccer in the US.

They even go after churches...holding Superbowl parties. lol

NFL Pulls Plug On Big-Screen Church Parties

Originally posted by lacrimaererum
reply to post by goou111

 

you are a criminal participating in criminal activity.

this is the law. i do not make the law. why do you think you are above the law.

i don't care if you want to break the law, just don't look for sympathy when you get caught. you want someone to play a violin when you tell your sob story?

the fact is all the big stores buy the damm fake ones to.. they just buy half fake and half real and mix em all in
and still charge all of us the same and call them real....
ive been to all the big stores that sell jerseys and checked em out.. and u know what??

ITS THE SAME DAMM JERSEYS.. but there only 20$ in china

( at nfl.com the same new nike jersey is 250$ or more)

but since they have the license to sell em they can get away with it

so who do you think is bringin in more fakes the guys like me at flea markets only open on the weekends?

or the big stores that sell 1000s
think about it

reply to post by irsuccubus


ty
i was actually just thinkin aboutthat in my store today.. how about an adult novelty and sex store lol

they dont have 1 in my market and i would be allowed to sell it

iill have to get some wholesale prices and check that out

Originally posted by Infi8nity

Originally posted by PatrickGarrow17
reply to post by goou111

 

You were sort of stealing from the sports leagues/teams/brand of jerseys....

I mean I really don't blame you, it's not a huge crime. But you're not getting locked up, right? The teams that own the rights to these designs should protect their product.

Not really... Would those people have bought a jersey if they did not see them in the store for $35?

in my flea market absolutly not lol... i ended up sellin half of em for 30 frikin dollars or less cause flea market shoppers are lookin for deals and always haggelin

No reasonable person ever agreed to pay the dues to protect corporate copyrights with tax dollars, let them hire thier own investigators to harass people selling products that they bought legally to begin with. Now no kid from the hood can have a shirt with thier teams name on it unless they can afford to pay much more than $35...give me a break....they stole this guys property and valued these shirts at $250 each to get them back.....

Yup only the "big boys" can profit from cheap crap made in China...maybe you'll be allowed to work at Walmart for $8 bucks an hour to sell the cheap crap for them, if your lucky make as much as a few shirts would have cost at $35 each in a day......total disgusting abuse of power.....

reply to post by goou111

Yah, it sucks. Because every Jersey you sell to someone who goes to the game and doesn't buy one of those rip off "real"-ly high priced ones at the "official" booth in the concession depletes their income.

They can take an "official flying f---". Finding a niche in a market to entrepreneur by is supposed to be the American way. Oh yah, this ain't that America anymore.

By the way, they allow them in the country to make money from import tariffs. Then they steal them from you and sell them back to you. And they tax the NFL concession.

Plus the intellectual bureaucrat cops divided up your other goods they confiscated I am sure.

reply to post by goou111

in my flea market absolutly not lol... i ended up sellin half of em for 30 frikin dollars or less cause flea market shoppers are lookin for deals and always haggelin

I feel for you. Thanks for the heads up. I do flea markets too and its good to know this. Like anyone gets rich selling at flea markets and whatnot. These pricks and all the other local undercover PD and narco squads got anything better to do than hang out and bother people at a flea market on the weekend. I've had to deal with them too. You never know when they are going to pounce on some poor schmuck trying to make a buck to eat by. There aren't any real criminals out there, but thats where they are; scopin for stuff for their christmas tree and freebies from you.

reply to post by intrptr


you know whats odd? i sold these jerseys to uniformed city officers.. they would buy em all the time

i have three of there numbers in my phone so i could call em when there jersey got in..

there even tellin me now i should bring em back in and just keep em on the dl

Originally posted by goou111
reply to post by Destinyone

 

ty

i feel like if your not lying to anyone and your not stealing from anyone thats an honest buck

It's called Patent Infringement.

You are buying an illegal product that is NOT copy righted selling it to the public for money.

I realize there are some people that are not aware of this but it is nothing to play with and risk losing every thing
Trust me, I've seen it happen, a few of the people caught we knew personally.

The DHS or back in the 80's it was the US Marshalls, are protecting the companies that created the product.
Whether it is a Nike Product or a Disney product, those companies are protected by law.
That's the whole point of their products being copy righted.
They want their fair share of the profits made off of their product.
And that's why they want to stop the bootlegged stuff from being sold to the public.

If the wholesale price is super low and appears to good to be true, there's a reason.
It's probably a fake.
No matter how tempting, don't chance it.

I am very sorry you got caught but not surprised.
They are really cracking down on that kind of stuff any more.

I wish you the best in the future ~~

snarky

Firstly, I was surprised to hear the DHS and ICE have the jurisdiction to do this anti-counterfeit stuff.
Secondly, if you were in fact breaking the law by selling counterfeit items, then you can't complain about being caught.
Thirdly, I guess those people who have posted here about buying things cheaply from China and reselling them at markets for a better profit margin must be fans of Walmart and stores like that, because you are doing the same thing as Walmart does.
Fourthly, why does anyone NEED a sports jersey (if you are on the team, they will give you one)? And if you don't need the jersey, then you just WANT one. So, buy a legit one, not some knockoff, because you are contributing to the crime of counterfeiting.
Fifthly, if you think the legit product is too expensive, then don't buy it. If enough people stop buying this stuff, the price will come down (law of supply and demand.)

Sports franchises are businesses not governmental agencies which exist for the public benefit alone, so why do you think you deserve their product for next to nothing? Again, don't buy it, why support those greedy businesses by PAYING them so you can advertise their business on your hat, back, chest, etc. These sports franchises could give a crap about you; only if you are a paying customer do you matter to them.

Think sports professionals are overpaid primadonas? Then don't watch them, don't help pay their inflated salaries, don't contribute to the whole system/problem which has lead to the OP getting their allegedly illegal products confiscated.

If you think the goverment is wasting time with busting the small timers who sell counterfeits, then you must also think they are wasting their time busting individual illegal immigrants too. If you really think that the government is wasting their time enforcing certain laws, then start lobbying for change of the laws, and get others on board who support your position.

Our politicians love to tout the phrase, "We are a nation of laws." Who makes the laws? Seek out the law makers if you want real change.

[sarcasm]
If the law is unjust, then take the example from Dr. M.L. King and do some sit-ins at the flea market to peacefully protest against the unjust anti-counterfeiting laws, which only serve to keep the big greedy corporations so wealthy, because they are gouging the consumer by selling their jerseys, hats, etc at inflated prices. This price gouging causes the consumer such distress because we really need these jerseys, hats and such in order to live. A regular non-branded shirt, jersey, or hat just won't do! I need a team name and logo on it, because it's critical for my survival! I just love my team and I will die if I can't get their jersey for a cheaper price! So, let me have fakes for cheap, or force those corporations to lower their prices so I don't have to suffer needlessly...
[/sarcasm]

Do I believe there are unjust laws? Yes, I do, but if I break those unjust laws and get punished, I wouldn't be surprised. If enough people draw attention to unjust laws, then things can change. Anti-counterfeit laws don't fall into my definition of an unjust law.