Fans of fake luxury goods out of luck after police raid

Thursday, Dec. 7, 2006 | 7:09 a.m.

Shopgirls at Gucci and Louis Vuitton unlocked their jaws upon learning that Metro Police seized more than $3 million in counterfeit goods last weekend - purses that sell for $500, police said, faked in pleather and priced at $39.95.

Oh, but please, shopgirls simper. Purses that sell for $500? That's almost a crime!

At the Forum Shops at Caesars, Gucci's popular "Pelham" purse retails for $1,455. And at Vuitton, a pressed-pant clerk points to an entry-level logo bag that starts at $915 - and it's kept behind glass!

Not so at the Fantastic Indoor Swapmeet, where police raided 26 vendors selling knockoffs: counterfeit purses, pens, watches, shoes, clothes, CDs and DVDs. At the swap meet, police say, the fake stuff was spread across counters for customers who ought to know better.

"Everybody knows a Rolex doesn't look like that," Sgt. Prokopios Ziros said, pointing at a busted-link, faux-gold phony. The police officer lifted his wrist: "Mine's real."

Ziros' men - part of a specialized police problem-solving unit - started training for the raid one month in advance, after Edward Norton of Edward Norton Consulting & Investigations asked for help. Norton, who wouldn't name the luxury brands his company was hired to protect from local counterfeiters, said he needed backup to pull off the counterfeit seizure - which began at 10:30 a.m. Sunday and didn't end until 2:30 the following morning. Police filled a midsize moving van with the confiscated goods: Prada, Christian Dior, Juicy Couture, Cartier, Mont Blanc, Nike, Dooney & Bourke, et al.

"People were running around with bags," Ziros said, "trying to hide them."

One Fantastic shopkeeper, Francisco Santoyo, had $866,000 worth of fake watches - "Rolexes" police say Santoyo sold for $750 to $1,000 each, assuring customers that his bogus timepieces looked real. Ha! Hardly, one of Ziros' men said Tuesday, standing in the secret and freezing storage shed where police are storing the seized goods. The second hand of a real Rolex, the officer demonstrated, doesn't tick-tick-tick. It glides.

And the lining of a designer bag should be sewn in, Ziros said, holding a pink, padded fake Chanel purse. Another indication that suggested the bag is fake, Ziros noted: Its handles are wrapped in plastic!

Santoyo was arrested with three other swap meet merchants, charged with selling, displaying or advertising goods with false trademark - three counts each. The 22 other counterfeit vendors were given the opportunity to voluntarily surrender their fake goods without being charged, part of an informal good-faith agreement for the first-caught.

Counterfeit once, Norton said, shame on you; counterfeit twice, shame on your bail bondsman.

The problem is that people who deal in dummy goods stand to profit stunningly.

"It's better than drugs," Norton said. Ziros chimed in, "And it's safer.

"Crack dealers get shot. Sell a fake purse, who's going to kill you?"

Looks can kill - or at least tell all. At Gucci on Tuesday night, hours after police had locked up the seized goods and gone home, a salesgirl demonstrated how she can spot a fake. Running an acrylic nail over the tooling of an almost $1,500 purse, she said, "real leather scratches." Sometimes women will walk into the real store with the fake bags - brazen! Sometimes, a Vuitton counter clerk said, "they don't even realize it's not real."

The International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition estimates global counterfeit sales generate $600 billion annually, accounting for 6 percent or 7 percent of world trade. Counterfeit items could be coming to Las Vegas through a Southern California pipeline of international knockoffs from China, Hong Kong and Mexico, Norton said. Exactly how the merchandise ends up at a place such as Fantastic, and in stores throughout Las Vegas, is harder to know.

"These people don't give up a whole lot of info," Norton said. "And do you think they're saving receipts?"

Fantastic is open only on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays; there's a $1 entrance fee - no shirt, no shoes, no service.

Teresa Bassett, who has owned an embroidery store at the Decatur Boulevard swap meet for five years, predicted Wednesday, while catching up on work, that business would bustle on as usual. "I don't think it's going to be a huge difference," she said. "We're a pretty busy little venue."

Gucci is a pretty busy little venue, too. It sells about six $1,455 Pelham purses every day, according to a shopgirl, who, pausing, explained, "Honey, I just work here."