Monthly Archives: November 2016

Busted: World’s Largest Viagra Factory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAXk3MmCipk

In September, 2016 police officers in Poland raided what is believed to be the largest Viagra Factory on records near the town of Bydgoszcz. Police discovered a secret entrance in an apartment that led to a production room. Fourteen people were arrested. It is alleged that millions of euros worth of counterfeit drugs had already been sold via the Internet, while 100,000 ED pills worth an estimated 3.95 million euros and 430,000 vials of steroids were seized

Fake Guitar Strings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKE7mO4W2Hk

Fake guitar strings are big problem that every major string manufacturer including Elixir, Gibson, D’Addario have had to battle. Many of the fakes are sold on Internet websites like eBay, Amazon, and AliBaba.  Most of the counterfeits come from China.

A few years ago, Long Island based D’Addario & Company, which makes guitar strings for rockers like Lenny Kravits and Dave Matthews, got fed up with complaints from retailers around the world about fakes and enlisted assistance from U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY).  This led to a meeting with Alibaba Group and in 2013. Addario & Company opened a storefront on Alibaba Group’s Tmall.com platform which hosts storefronts for major brands such as Nike Inc. and Gap Inc. and is very stringent about becoming a piracy-free zone. The idea was to go head to head with the pirates. The strategy worked and will hopefully encourage other string manufacturers.

 

 

SOUR GRAPES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPUYuwSRwB8

In November, Netflix will air Sour Grapes, a documentary about Rudy Kurniawan who received a 10-year prison sentence for counterfeiting vintage wine. Kurniawan was a connoisseur and a wine expert who befriended other wealthy collectors. A New York auction house sold $35 million of Kurniawan’s wines in 2006. Kurniawan prepared the fakes in his kitchen. He had a complete in-house factory with bottles and labels. His expertise completed a shrewd operation that fooled many including billionaire William Koch, who purchased quite a few of his wines and testified at the criminal trial. It is estimated that there may be as many as 10,000 of Kurniawan’s bottles still in private collections.