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Crime seldom paysIn April 2004, Hewlett-Packard Company (HP), in Beijing, filed a complaint, with the Beijing Public Security Bureau, claiming the copyrights they held on their printing supplies had been infringed.
After accepting the complaint, local police conducted a thorough investigation and craftfully planned a sting to catch all the counterfeiters.
Shen Guoding, from East China’s Zhejiang Province, was identified as the main suspect, and the ring’s organizer. Police suspected he had, for several years, been manufacturing and selling fake printing supplies bearing well-known brand names, including HP and Canon.
In December 2004, police uncovered what they believed was Shen’s underground factory. The site was raided by Beijing Administration of Industry and Commerce officials. Shen was not apprehended.
Last year, police suspected Shen was again making printing supplies on a larger scale than before.
Police decided to take action again. This time, the sting involved more than 30 policemen and some agents from Globelaw Associates. It began on April 20, 2005, and lasted for three days.
The authorities raided what they said were Shen’s underground factory and several affiliated warehouses. Police seized 730 finished fake HP toner cartridges, more than 2,000 boxes of semi-finished fake HP toner cartridges, 96 boxes of Canon toner cartridges and thousands of counterfeit packages and labels.
Twenty-one people, including Shen, were detained.
During the subsequent interrogations, police decided 13 of the suspects, including Shen, were guilty. They were arrested for counterfeiting.
The 13 were charged and appeared in court. In a verdict handed down by Haidian District People’s Court of Beijing last September, Shen was sentenced to jail for one year and four months, and fined 40,000 yuan (US$4,819.28).
The others received jail sentences, ranging from six months to one year, and fines, ranging from 1,000 yuan (US$120.48) to 10,000 yuan (US$1,204.82).
In this case, which was fairly big, Chinese authorities broke an entire counterfeit supply chain, and won convictions against all suspects. The suspects’ arrests, convictions and sentences no doubt is a deterrent.
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