As the Spring Festival approaches, beware of the rampant spread of counterfeit alcohol
Compiled from The Paper
Case review
As the Spring Festival approaches, the liquor sales season peaks, and some lawbreakers are becoming restless. On January 12, Tongshan police received a tip that a man in Tangzhang Town frequently visited a scrap station to buy high-end liquor bottles and caps, offering prices far above market value. This immediately raised officers' suspicions. Through investigation and analysis, police quickly identified a villager surnamed Liu from a village in Tangzhang Town. According to the investigating officers, Liu often transported large quantities of boxed goods from outside, and soon shipped them out in bulk, most of which were "high-end liquors." There were no liquor warehouses in the village, and Liu had no supermarkets or sales outlets under his name—so where did the liquor come from, and where was it going?
Xie Tian, a police officer from the Tangzhang派出所 of Tongshan Public Security Bureau, stated, "Liu and his gang members usually transported goods in the dead of night, storing different types of liquor in different warehouses, and were very cautious during transport."
On January 20, Tongshan police raided two counterfeit production sites and three warehouses belonging to Liu's gang, arresting five suspects. They seized over 1,000 cases of various well-known liquors on the spot, along with a batch of counterfeit brand liquor boxes, packaging, empty bottles, bottle caps, labels, and equipment for making fake liquor, totaling over 500,000 yuan in value.
[1] Upon investigation, suspect Liu and his wife Wu began producing and selling counterfeit high-end liquor in 2020. The couple rented a dilapidated two-story old house as a workshop, using low-end liquor purchased from the market for over 20 yuan as raw material, filling it into collected high-end liquor bottles, then matching it with the brand's bottle caps, and attaching QR codes and barcodes to produce a bottle of "high-end liquor." These liquors were delivered in cases to local tobacco and liquor stores or supermarkets for sale. According to reports, each case (6 bottles) cost only 200 yuan, with a final selling price of 400 yuan, yielding a 100% profit. The related merchants then sold them at the price of genuine high-end brand liquor.
"Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China"
[2] Article 214
[3] Whoever knowingly sells goods bearing a counterfeit registered trademark, with a relatively large sales amount, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or criminal detention, and shall also, or shall only, be fined; if the sales amount is huge, the offender shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than seven years, and shall also be fined.
[1] The author's perspective
[4] In recent years, the crime of selling goods bearing counterfeit registered trademarks has been increasing. Apart from the huge "profits" illegal operators can obtain, this is also because such crimes often involve spot transactions, making them less likely to be detected. Consequently, most illegal operators harbor a fluke mentality, leading to frequent occurrences of infringement and criminal acts involving counterfeiting registered trademarks and selling goods bearing counterfeit registered trademarks.
[5] In this case, Liu and his wife filled low-end bottled liquor costing over 20 yuan into high-end liquor bottles, then used a machine to attach the high-end brand's bottle caps. The counterfeit liquor, costing only over 30 yuan per bottle, was resold to tobacco and liquor stores or supermarkets for over 60 yuan, with a 100% profit margin per bottle, demonstrating the strong allure of the crime. Liu not only possessed this mentality of knowingly selling counterfeit goods, but the sales amount was also extremely large, and he flukishly believed he would not be discovered. However, the net of justice has wide meshes but never lets a guilty person escape, and he ultimately committed a crime and could not avoid criminal punishment.
