WASHINGTON: Customs and Border Protection officials today announced a sizable seizure of counterfeit earbuds from Dulles Airport. CBP officers last month examined a shipment of 120 boxes that contained 60,000 counterfeit earbuds marked with the Samsung brand. If genuine, the earbuds were worth about $360,000. The boxes arrived from China on April 18, according to the CBP, and were being shipped to Brazil. Officers discovered that each box contained 500 earbuds bearing the Samsung brand, and they detained the shipment and submitted documentation to import specialists from CBP’s Electronics Center of Excellence and Expertise. The import specialists determined the earbuds to be counterfeit.
“Customs and Border Protection will continue to work closely with our trade and consumer safety partners to identify and seize counterfeit and inferior merchandise, especially those products that pose potential harm to American consumers,” Wayne Biondi, CBP port director for the Port of Washington Dulles, said in a prepared statement.
CBP engages in an aggressive Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) enforcement program and has made IPR enforcement a CBP Priority Trade Issue, according to Biondi. CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized a record number of goods that violated Intellectual Property Rights in fiscal 2016, with more than 31,500 seizures worth $1.38 billion. “The theft of intellectual property and the trade in substandard and often dangerous goods threatens America’s innovation economy and consumer health and safety, and it generates proceeds that fund criminal activities and organized crime,” said Casey Owen Durst, CBP’s field operations director in Baltimore, the agency’s operational commander in the Mid-Atlantic region. “Intellectual property rights enforcement is a Customs and Border Protection priority trade issue, and a mission that we take seriously.”
