Counterfeiting

Remember the days when acquiring fake ID meant scissors, glue and a good typewriter? These days fake IDs have gone high-tech. And the stakes are high as well. Gone is the time of the lumpy driver's license with a 17-year-old's face pasted to a 28-year-old's driving vitae. The state made things harder in 1991 by adding holograms and magnetic strips to licenses. But enterprising teen-agers eager for beer are never far behind.

A device that reveals counterfeit drugs in the hands of Food & Drug Administration agents is set to become the newest weapon in the worldwide effort to eradicate malaria, and may soon be used to detect useless look-alikes of drugs that combat cancer, heart disease and viral infections. FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg on Wednesday unveiled an initiative aimed at putting simple handheld versions of the FDA device into the hands of public health field workers in Ghana to help root out counterfeit malaria drugs.

The Food and Drug Administration warned consumers Tuesday against the indiscriminate use of the anti-acne cream Retin-A as a treatment for wrinkles. The drug safety agency also cautioned against counterfeit versions of the drug and said it would be cracking down on unlicensed makers of the cream who are advertising and distributing watered-down imitations.

The humble toaster isn't the first product most people would associate with counterfeiting, but nearly 15,000 of the commonplace kitchen appliances were seized by federal authorities at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles in March. The generic-looking toasters arrived from China bearing counterfeit Underwriters Laboratories safety markings, the Department of Homeland Security said. The commonly seen UL seal cannot be secured without the approval of Underwriters Laboratories, an Illinois company founded in 1894.

Sex shop owner Wang Yunsu wondered how so many competitors could suddenly undercut her low prophylactic prices. Now she thinks she knows: The other condoms are counterfeit. "Some manufacturers are cutting corners," she said, stocking a shelf with a domestic brand whose name translates as Forever Love. "And it's all about profit." It's China's latest knockoff scandal -- inferior contraceptives that health officials say provide little protection and may in fact spread infectious diseases, tarnishing the axiom that condoms mean safe sex. In November, investigators in Hunan province provided details about a July raid on an underground workshop where they found laborers lubricating condoms with vegetable oil in unsterile conditions, passing off the counterfeits as high-quality-brand products.

A West German man was arrested after printing 110,000 counterfeit marks, the equivalent of $58,000, with a color photocopying machine, police said Thursday. The spokesman said police got a tip and were waiting at the door of a photocopying center to stop the man as he tried to leave.

Crime-fighting canine McGruff the Crime Dog is looking to take a bite out of counterfeiting. The talking cartoon dog, sporting his trademark trench coat, is part of a new anti-counterfeiting campaign by the nonprofit National Crime Prevention Council and the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which is part of the Justice Department. The campaign seeks to dispel any notion that counterfeiting is a victimless crime. "It costs the U.S. economy tens of billions of dollars each year, deprives people of their livelihoods, encourages criminal activities by gangs and organized crime groups, and sometimes results in serious illness or injury," the campaign Web page said.

Johnson & Johnson said an additional incident of counterfeiting involving the Procrit anemia drug has been found, the second time in a week the drug maker reported that some of the medicine was diluted. In a letter dated Friday, the company told doctors and other health-care professionals to watch for Procrit with Lot No. P002384.

A judge has dismissed counterfeiting charges against Iraqi National Congress party leader Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon favorite once considered a front-runner to become Iraq's leader, authorities said Friday. The charges against Chalabi, a wealthy former Iraqi exile who has denied wrongdoing, were dismissed for lack of evidence, said Zuhair Maliky, Iraq's chief investigative judge. Maliky said the charges, dropped at a court session Thursday, could be refiled if more evidence was uncovered.

Four San Fernando Valley residents pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges they operated a Downtown counterfeiting operation where police last week seized more than 12,000 fake designer label sweat shirts, jerseys and jeans, said a district attorney spokesman. Two private investigators working for Guess? Inc. had been monitoring Yun Jun Kang, the owner of the garment-making business, Deputy Dist. Atty. William D. Clark said.

Federal authorities have seized 1,500 counterfeit Hermes handbags from China at the Port of Los Angeles, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Tuesday. Genuine Hermes leather bags retail for thousands of dollars apiece. The two shipments, discovered Feb. 12 and Feb. 26, would be worth as much as $14 million if sold at full price, the customs agency said. Importing counterfeit purses and wallets has been on the rise, with a 142% increase in the value of goods seized in 2012 compared with the previous year, the agency said in a statement.

Lincoln's Grave Robbers Steve Sheinkin Scholastic Press: 224 pp., $16.99, ages 10 and up Steven Spielberg's movie "Lincoln" is not for every child, and Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" is not even for every adult, but at a time when Abraham Lincoln's role in U.S. history is on the public mind again, there's a new book about the 16th president to capture children's gleefully ghoulish imagination. "Lincoln's Grave Robbers" by Steve Sheinkin is terrific. It's history in context and full of fun and thrills: money real and phony, bumbling criminals, a beloved president, and lawmen who go to all lengths to protect his body in its resting place.

Federal authorities seized 132 domain names and arrested one man in an international effort to stop the sale of counterfeit goods during the online shopping day called Cyber Monday. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, working with Europol and police in several countries including the United Kingdom and Denmark, targeted sites that sold knock off goods such as DVDs, perfume and even jerseys. Authorities also arrested and charged Gary Hammer with trafficking counterfeit goods.

Federal safety regulators are warning that counterfeit air bags are being installed by auto repair shops that might not deploy in an accident or alternately, could explode, sending metal shrapnel into the vehicle's passenger cabin. “We want consumers to be immediately aware of this problem and to review our safety information to see if their vehicle could be in need of inspection,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. The fake air bags look nearly identical to certified, original-equipment parts, right down to bearing the insignia and branding of major automakers, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

When you take medicine, there's a good chance you're getting a dose of modern global business practices as well. Eighty percent of the active ingredients in the medications that Americans use are produced overseas. In a single drug, it's quite possible that the individual components came from several countries and were assembled in yet another before arriving on U.S. shores. This diffuse manufacturing operation increases the opportunities for chicanery, which can include too-low amounts of active ingredients or substitution of different ingredients as well as adulterated ones.

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday warned consumers and physicians about counterfeit forms of Adderall being sold online. Unscrupulous distributors are apparently taking advantage of the fact that the drug is currently in short supply because of manufacturing problems and are selling other drugs, claiming that they are Adderall. Adderall, manufactured by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, is approved for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy, but is also used illicitly for increasing attention and getting high.

Police arrested four people and seized $3,000 in fake bills in a raid on a La Habra home suspected of hiding a counterfeiting operation, authorities said Saturday. Investigators believe the operation was partly responsible for a spike in the number of reports of fake money being passed in the La Habra area over the last few months, police said.

Southern California designer jeans maker True Religion Apparel Inc. has won a $864-million court judgment against online Chinese counterfeiters, but actually getting that money will be a battle. The Vernon company, whose jeans can go for nearly $500, sued 282 websites originating from China and accused them of lifting company trademarks and peddling fake goods. The websites had names such as TrueReligion4Cheap.com and ForTrueReligionJeans.com. The defendants were a no-show in court, so the New York federal judge handed down a default judgment this month.

A Los Angeles-area wine collector who became so influential in the rare vintage market that he drove up prices worldwide has been charged by federal authorities with fraudulently obtaining millions of dollars in loans and attempting to sell $1.3 million in counterfeit French Burgundy. Rudy Kurniawan, 35, was arrested Thursday without incident at his Arcadia home by FBI agents assigned to the Los Angeles office after a years-long investigation by the FBI Art Crime Team. In an indictment unsealed Thursday, the Indonesian national was charged by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan with three counts of wire fraud and two counts of mail fraud.