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Saturday, August 13, 2005
Cops seize fake jeans, shirts
By Mia E. Abellana
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
The Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) 7 raided two downtown stores and a bodega full of fake Dickies jeans, shirts and shorts yesterday morning.
They also arrested two Chinese nationals believed to be owners of the stores selling the fake merchandise.
Tinchu Jualo, regional sales coordinator for American Star Apparel Phils. Inc., wrote to the CIDG 7 requesting them to investigate the manufacture and sale of counterfeit Dickies products.
American Star Apparel is the Philippine licensee of Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing Co. based in Fort Worth, Texas, the company that owns the trademark for Dickies.
Jualo told Sun.Star Cebu they heard that Hong Kong Trading and HY Trading on Borromeo St. have the biggest warehouse of fake Dickies products in Cebu.
She admitted that there are other merchants who sell fake products, but said Hong Kong Trading and HY Trading have the most stocks.
‘Real owners’
Although both stores are registered under the name of Salome Sara-osa, Senior Insp. Patrick Vaño said the real owners are Yang Hong Jiang, also known as Alex Yang, and Sun Mei Wei.
Both were placed under arrest and will be charged with violating Republic Act 8293 or trademark infringement.
Sara-osa, though, was not around.
Vaño said that after receiving Jualo’s complaint, they proceeded to put the stores under surveillance and bought some samples of the Dickies products that were sold.
With these as evidence, they were able to secure a search warrant.
Police also found three Chinese nationals whose status in the country was not clear. They will be turned over to the Bureau of Immigration if their papers are incomplete. But they could not be placed under arrest because they were not the subjects of the warrant nor were they doing anything illegal at the time of the raid, Vaño said.
Police waited several minutes before forcing open the lock to the bodega at the second floor of HY Trading, said Chief Insp. Crisaleo Tolentino.
Tolentino used a hammer to break the bodega’s padlocks.
Confiscated items
Police found stacks of boxes and plastic bags containing different brands of apparel.
Aside from Dickies branded T-shirts, jeans and shorts, there were also piles of clothes branded Levi’s, Lee, Guess and Mossimo.
However, police only seized the Dickies items because they were the only complainants of trademark infringement.
Jualo said the fake merchandise has not affected their sales. But the firm is worried about the brand’s image, saying the fake products are made of low quality materials, she said.
(August 13, 2005 issue)
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