Why Hong Kong is a city of fakes: five recent counterfeit operations busted by customs officers

From a deceptive-fruit scandal to fake Korean cosmetic products, the city is awash with phoney merchandise. We look back at some of the biggest counterfeit capers to have shaken the city

Reading Time:3 minutes

Hong Kong is awash with fake merchandise, the object of close attention from customs officers, who regularly stage raids. One recently targeted the city’s famous Ladies’ Market (pictured).

Published: 6:02pm, 27 Apr 2018Updated: 6:13pm, 27 Apr 2018

Owing to its proximity to China, a nation responsible for more than 86 per cent of the world’s counterfeit goods, according to a 2017 report by law enforcement agency Europol, Hong Kong is awash with fake merchandise.

While the law states that anyone convicted of importing or exporting forged goods faces a fine of up to HK$500,000 (US$64,000) and up to five years in prison, running a phoney-goods racket can be so lucrative some people think it’s worth the risk. With a Hong Kong taxi driver having been arrested on Thursdayfor scamming passengers with fake banknotes, we recalled some other counterfeit cases Hong Kong customs officers have uncovered in recent years.

Lam Yau-tak, divisional commander of the Intellectual Property General Investigation unit from Hong Kong Customs poses with the counterfeit Sunkist oranges. Photo: SCMP

Oranges

Hong Kong was rocked by a counterfeit fruit scandal in 2014, when an eagle-eyed shopper in Yuen Long, in the New Territories, complained to the Customs and Excise Department after noticing their favourite oranges were sourer and had thicker skins than usual.

It wasn’t that the oranges were fake fruit; tests by government chemists found them edible. Rather, the fakes were wrongly labelled as premium imports from American supplier Sunkist and were being sold for half the price of the quality brand.