Sunday, March 25, 2007 | 7:17 a.m.
The security guard at the Rancho Indoor Swap Meet - a stale 1971 stump of a building smacked onto 10 acres of aching asphalt - is straight certain there isn't any counterfeit merchandise being sold under his watch.
"Yeah," he says, clutching a side-holster cell phone, "none of that stuff here."
Oh, please.
"Actually, there is," says Metro Sgt. Prokopios Ziros , a cop who likes to keep things clipped.
And there was.
With some merchants wailing and others looking resigned, more than $400,000 in counterfeit merchandise would be pulled from the swap meet floor before this day was over, by police and private investigators trained in identifying illegal knockoffs.
The loot would include at least 100 pairs of fake Nike sneakers, boxes of pirated DVDs, at least 18 phony platinum Playboy pendants, too many pleather purses to count, really, and piles of flimsy clothing, clamoring to look like something dear.
On closer inspection, a shirt that should be branded "G-Unit" across the front really says "G-Unot."
Edward Norton, a private investigator and counterfeit consultant, is explaining swap-meet raids to 10 civilians he has hired to be his undercover investigators. In a west Las Vegas police station, they strategize the bust - how to walk, how to talk, how to fake out the merchants who operate the slotted stores, stalls built from particle board and secured with blue plastic tarp.
"Stroll in just like you're shopping. Amble to your booths. You're shopping , people - that's all you're doing," he instructs. "If somebody runs, don't tackle them."
Norton is hired by the big brands to sniff out and squelch copyright infringement and counterfeiting. He invites store owners to obligingly give up their illegal goods in exchange for a warning. Or, he says, you can balk and face criminal charges. Most merchants get it.
Norton is an expert in designer fakery, prone to pull a pair of women's pants off a shelf for a tutorial in double-stitching. Counterfeiters can't afford the heavy needle needed to reinforce thick seams, he says, running his finger over the fly of a pair of girl's jeans that were proved phony.
He foams at the thought of coming upon a cache of pirated movies - that's a felony, friends.
"The store owners are going to try to lie to you," Norton says. "They're going to try all kinds of things."
When Norton is certain someone is selling fake goods, he enlists Ziros' Metro unit to run the raid - securing search warrants, scolding reluctant shop owners and arresting those who refuse cooperation.
This day, they target 10 vendors from whom Norton has bought fake merchandise at least three times this month, just so he can be sure.
But he doesn't have to buy to be certain. Some vendors unabashedly display the goods, hanging them in plastic wrap from the warped ceiling.
When he's ready to raid, Norton draws up a map and assembles his men, who are trained to identify sure-fire signs of designer forgery: badly printed logos, purses without silk linings, European watches made in China.
The team members walk casually in purposeful pairs, straight to a predetermined shop, where they briefly pretend to browse. When everyone is in place, a secret set of signals is exchanged and the shoppers reveal themselves: "Hello, we're anti-piracy and counterfeit investigators."
By this time, police have moved into place on the outside perimeter, should a seller dash out the door (it's happened before) or put up a fight.
The vendors swallow hard.
A sweating man selling music CDs on shelves in a n 8-by-10-foot stall says he would rather be arrested than give up his goods. The cops shrug, cuff his wrists behind his back and comb through his racks. They confiscate $700 in CDs and say they'll seek to charge him with 108 counts of unlawful reproduction or sale of sound recordings.
What gave him away? Well, how many CDs really come with 43 tracks and a photocopied cover cut on a jagged edge? Where's the shrink wrap? The security seal?
All of a sudden, the man's sorry and trying to make a deal. No dice.
The International Anti- Counterfeiting Coalition estimates global counterfeit sales generate $600 billion annually, accounting for 6 percent or 7 percent of world trade. Because designer-product cachet is part ly based on price, high-end retailers are desperate to clamp down on the knockoffs, which sully brand names by eroding exclusivity. Counterfeit items likely come to Las Vegas through a Southern California pipeline of knockoffs from China, Hong Kong and Mexico, Norton says.
It's certainly not the first time the investigator has seen knockoffs at Las Vegas swap meets.
In December, Norton and Ziros seized more than $3 million in counterfeit goods from the Fantastic Indoor Swap Meet on Decatur Boulevard. The scene will likely replay itself every time Norton comes upon large-scale counterfeit sales. The investigator says he calls Ziros every few weeks.
A jewelry booth manager hesitates to let police search his safe, insisting there's nothing fake inside. This means Ziros will need to get a search warrant, an hourslong process, unless he can push the cooperation.
Ziros leans into the counter and says, "If we find one item that's fake, guess how upset I'm going to be."
The manager gives up the safe and sure enough, there's nothing inside. Investigators do find two fake Burberry watches behind the counter, however.
"Oh yes," the manager says nonchalantly, eating a sandwich and eyeing the goods. "I bought these several years ago."
Norton is deflated. He had conducted four undercover counterfeit buys at this shop, this month. Chain pendants, mainly, with pirated Superman logos. But they're nowhere in sight this day.
"He must have sold them all," Norton says.
Down the hall, a hunched shoe salesman is wringing his wrists. A cop is stationed outside his storefront, and inside, one of Norton's undercover men is pawing Nikes stacked behind the counter.
When the counterfeit investigators search a store, the cop says, "It's like termites through wood." They eat through piles of product and leave the shelves bare but honest.
The officer explains six times to the protesting store owner that the shoes are fake. The serial number in every shoe is identical. The store owner doesn't get it.
"The fakes, I don't care," he says. "But these are real Nike. Real Nike."
The shoes are shoved into blue evidence bags, labeled with neon green seizure stickers.
"You can be convinced all you want," Ziros says, watching the bags get tagged for transport to an evidence locker.
The shop owner frets and mills, making phone calls and producing scraps of paper from shoe distributors in Los Angeles, as if they were evidence of his innocence.
Peering into a closed shop, the police see a rack of fake Louis Vuitton bags and hats. The real stuff isn't sold out of a swap meet stall. To enter the store without the owner in sight, they draft a search warrant on the spot, call a judge for approval, and get a pair of bolt cutters. Inside, they seize a wealth of fake designer purses and other items, including $68,000 in sunglasses, their shoddy construction a clear sign they are counterfeit.
The owner will find out when he's arrested.
And so the day goes.
One by one, vendors bend. They give up their stores while other merchants, not targeted in the raid, watch with bewilderment.
A salesman, nailed, wanders the swap meet, strangling a set of worry beads, waiting for investigators to finish collecting his counterfeit earrings, cut to resemble Michael Jordan's trademarked dunk.
The police fill a U-Haul truck with fake purses, clothes, shoes, sunglasses, jewelry.
The swap meet's uniformed security guard - done swearing that the swap meet is squeaky clean - hangs back quietly. Ziros, pacing the swap meet floor, stops, then leans over his shoulder to school the guard: "We didn't just come here to look."
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