Walsall Council Trading Standards Officers, working in partnership with West Midlands Police and the National Markets Group recently performed a successful operation which saw in excess of 7,500 items of counterfeit clothing and footwear worth an estimated £1.5million seized from a self-storage facility within the borough.
Trading Standards was alerted as part of an ongoing investigation and suspicions were subsequently confirmed that a ‘gang’ was storing counterfeit products in a location in South Walsall.
Five Trading Standards Officers, five officers from the National Markets Group and four officers from West Midlands Police were involved in the operation, which involved forcing entry into a van at the facility and the investigation of a number of containers which were found to contain counterfeit goods including footwear and clothing.
This operation was carried out under Operation Flash, a national project concerning the use of self-storage units to conceal large quantities of counterfeit products destined for markets and other outlets across the UK.
David Elrington, Head of Community Safety & Enforcement said, “Our Trading Standards Officers work hard behind the scenes in their efforts to keep us all safe from shoddy and often dangerous counterfeit items. While some items may not be dangerous, they will not be of the quality of the brands who are frankly being ripped off and this also impacts on our local businesses selling genuine branded products of good quality.
“Often counterfeiters may also be involved in and fund other organised criminal activity such as drugs, trafficking and slavery so cracking down on this will ultimately help prevent other crime.
“Having £1.5m of counterfeit goods seized will hopefully send a strong message out — don’t do this in Walsall, because we’re all watching you.”
