Buyers fined in fakes crackdown

The Australian ^ | Aug 19 2005

[george wythe]

Rome The Latin expression caveat emptor - buyers beware - has taken on a whole new meaning in Italy, where authorities are cracking down on counterfeiting by imposing fines on the customers who buy from street sellers.

The hundreds of thousands of tourists in the country have not been told about a law that went into effect in May, which makes them liable to pay a fine of euro 3333 ($5397.57) with no appeal for buying counterfeit goods. Unless paid within two months, the fine rises to euro 10,000 ($16194.33).

The first foreigner to fall afoul of the law was a 60-year-old Danish woman, Kirsten Lorsen, who was caught in the act of buying a euro 10 ($16.19) pair of designer sunglasses.

Eight foreigners have been fined so far, the latest being a Canadian couple who stepped off a boat in Venice and were caught buying a fake Prada travel bag from one of the dozens of street sellers who lie in wait for the cruise-line passengers, often in front of the ritzy stores where the genuine articles are on sale.

[george wythe]

3,000 euros is about 4,060 American dollars {or 5,398 Australian dollars}

[weegee]

Nice little racket if they run themselves a sting operation.

Didn't Italy elect several porn stars?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Hey, you're only going to get one chance to rob the American tourists, so you might as well make it count.

[Logical me]

What a crock of sh@@. Typical of Italy. Everything backwards. So the police sit there and watch a vendor selling bogus items and arrest the one who has no idea it is counterfeit and purchases the item. What a jacka@@ country. A pure racket.

[george wythe]

The sellers are mostly illegal immigrants with no money; therefore, the tourists are the ones with deep pockets.

The sellers, many of them immigrants, are liable to pay a fine eight times smaller than that of their customers.

[patriot_wes]

"So the police sit there and watch a vendor selling bogus items and arrest the one who has no idea it is counterfeit and purchases the item."

Wouldn't surprise me if the vendors were undercover cops. - It is Italy don't forget.

[savedbygrace]

In Italy, there is apparently more than one way to get pinched in the butt.

[trebb]

Sounds like how the locals around Biloxi went with fireworks a few years back. There are fireworks stands all over theplace and city officials decided to control a perceived problem. It remained legal for the stands to sell them and for people to venture onto the property where the stands resided in order to purchase them, but it was illegal to possess them once you left the parking lot. Tell me there weren't some Dims involved in that one. It only lasted a season and many folks dared the city to try to enforce such stupidity.

[webboy45]

Cancel the trip to Italy. In fact cancel any trip to the crazy EU.

[Emmett McCarthy]

Maybe I'll go anyway. I figure maybe I'll buy some fake bootleg Viagra on the street. That way, even if I don't get screwed, I still get screwed.