Hong Kong customs net 135 boxes of copycat mooncakes
Counterfeiters try to sell inferior product under the brand of traditional bakery
Customs officers are no strangers to counterfeit red wine and pork luncheon meat. But as the Mid-Autumn Festival approaches next week, they have seized their first mooncakes bearing the forged trademark of a traditional bakery in Yuen Long.
The Hang Heung Cake Shop is the latest brand to fall victim to counterfeiters after 135 boxes of double-yolk white lotus seed paste mooncakes were seized from a cosmetics and beauty centre in Yuen Long on Monday.
Officers arrested the proprietor of the centre, a 50-year-old woman, on suspicion of selling mooncakes bearing fake labels to her clients.
The haul was believed to have been produced on the mainland and was worth about HK$20,000, the Customs and Excise Department said.
Michael Kwan Yuk-kwan, operations chief of customs' intellectual property investigation group, said the ingredients of the fake Hang Heung snack were of a low quality but were not harmful to health, according to tests.
"The egg yolk in the real product is very big and tastes good, but is very small and rather dry in the fake mooncake," he said.
The counterfeit product has a description of the ingredients printed on the metal box and the fireworks pattern on the lid is badly done.