Just in time to thwart illegal vendors’ back-to-school sales, federal agents have seized hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of knockoff blue jeans and kids’ lunch bags.
US Customs and Border Protection experts unearthed a load of counterfeit Lee blue jeans worth $325,000 at the Port of Newark this month.
And two days later, they found $36,000 worth of kids’ lunch bags with counterfeit pictures of Spider-Man and Super Mario and characters from the movies “Cars” and “Toy Story 3.”
All the merchandise uncovered by agents on Aug. 6 and Aug. 8 was of “generally poor quality,” the agency said.
Officials believe the knockoffs came from China. Officials weren’t sure exactly where the shipments were headed.
Both shipments were found in cargo containers.
The fake Lee jeans were found in a shipment labeled “girl’s cotton jeans,” and the fake lunch bags were in a container labeled “plastic flowers, plastic frames, etc.”
Officials didn’t want talk about exactly how they were tipped off that the containers contained bogus goods, except to say it involves using “available technology.”
“Typically, counterfeit items can be determined rather quickly — sometimes less than 24 hours or within a few days,” said Anthony Bucci, a Customs spokesman.
Last year, the total retail value of all seized goods was an estimated $1.1 billion.
About 80 percent of all counterfeit goods arrive in the United States from China and Hong Kong, authorities said.
While the number of government seizures last year jumped, the value of the confiscated goods declined.
Customs officials believe that’s because more fake goods are being sent through the mail and with couriers, and thus are more difficult to track.
The government figures that it seizes just a fraction of all the goods that are shipped.
Electronic devices — especially phones — were the top commodity seized in 2011, amounting to 22 percent of all seizures.
Shoes, pharmaceuticals and illegal videos each accounted for 9 percent of all seizures, authorities say.
In March, authorities charged 29 people with smuggling shoes, handbags and clothing in one of the largest counterfeit busts ever at the Port of New York and New Jersey.