New York Counterfeit Jackets Bust Yields Decoration Work for Special Needs Individuals, Donations for Charities

If you have gone some time without coming across a feel-good tale, perhaps the following account will end your hiatus. Thanks to an alteration in New York State’s business laws, 11,000 counterfeit jackets seized in 2016 are going to local charities, with special needs workers tasked with covering and camouflaging bogus logos and labels.

Initial shipments of the modified apparel items went to the altruistic destinations on Wednesday thanks to the aforementioned employees of the Westbury-based Spectrum and TRI Business & Career Center. Their efforts will eventually unite the charities with more than $1 million worth of refurbished goods that Nassau County officials removed from a warehouse 22 months ago. Having sought a second and far more legitimate life for the products that had been bearing phony emblems by Chanel, Louis Vuitton, The North Face, Polo Ralph Lauren and others, said figures connected with the philanthropic locations through District Attorney Madeline Singas.

“It’s the Robin Hood syndrome,” Rene Fiechter, of the Rehabilitation Institute, said of the modern take on the legendary individual’s penchant for giving to the poor after having robbed from the rich.

Thousands of seized counterfeit jackets are being put to good use on Long Island thanks to the @NassauDA. Young adults with autism and other disabilities from @SpecDesigns and TRI are helping out by covering the fake labels. @SophiabHall1 reports: https://t.co/o1LEmsRKHA pic.twitter.com/pcLB4Qu0vc

— WCBS 880 (@wcbs880) April 25, 2018

In helping dozens of charities, New York, having two years ago revised legislation that would have had such products destroyed, is calling on the special needs hires to use embroidery machines—also components of the bust—to stitch over the counterfeit jackets.

“People will be able to get the jackets they need to keep them warm, and we were able to complete a tremendous criminal prosecution,” Singas said of the employees’ efforts and the trademark counterfeiting felony charge against Guosheng Lu, whose deeds had become known to authorities due to his having fallen behind on payments for the shady New Cassel-based warehouse.

Along with the modifications done to the jackets, the special needs personnel could, per a Newsday analysis of the matter, tackle other projects thanks to the trio of added embroidery machines, which the publication says stitched fake labels on as many as 16 million garments. If assigned that additional duty, here’s hoping that if another huge counterfeit confiscation occurs in the Empire State, officials again enlist the same businesses to rectify the matter and likewise endow charities with the amended apparel.