Sneaker Freaker

Say we're dealing with someone on eBay who's based in Australia and yet the fakes are being shipped from China. Is that a crime?

Yes. In fact, all they're doing is further complicating their crime and putting another nail in the coffin. It is an offence to sell counterfeit goods. It's an offence to advertise counterfeit goods for sale. It's an offence to offer them for sale. It's an offence to sell them. And it's an offence to import them. It's also an offence to apply a trademark to a pre-existing product. And it's an offence to remove a trademark. So, in the one transaction, there's three Federal Crimes being committed right there. I think everyone knows that Al Capone was sent to jail for postal fraud, not for murder, rape, pillage, plunder and drug dealing.

In your experience what's the going rate for penalties for that type of offence?

The standard rate would be a $200 fine per item per trademark. It's $200 for the white one with the word ‘Nike' on it and it's another $200 for every one that has a swoosh. So, if you have one of these eBay sites and you sell 10 different styles of Nike shoes and you've got 10 of each in stock and if you've got 10 of those in different sizes it can very quickly end up in the tens of thousands. You might sell a couple of pairs of shoes a day, or a couple of pairs of a week, for a couple of years. One day we'll bang on your door and you'll be $30,000 poorer. Just run the numbers. You'd have to run a really serious business to get ahead of what it'll end up costing you. But, having said that, if you run a business of that size we'll be on your doorstep in 5 minutes flat because you'll be so obvious to us that you won't be able to get away.