Food and housing prices have been rising, creating an enormous market for counterfeit items among those without money.
Among the truckload of counterfeit items seized were CD's by Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson and DMX, among others, and videos including "John Q" and "Black Hawk Down," Sgt. Ralph Carone said.
To combat the sale of counterfeit items at the Olympics, the Sydney Olympics organizing committee is using ink containing DNA to mark official merchandise.
The act, for example, has established that Yelp is not responsible for negative reviews and that eBay is not liable when people sell counterfeit items.
Now people are trying to traffic counterfeit items that have a "wider effect on the economy", she says, such as pharmaceuticals and computer parts.
No problem, the man replied, brandishing a laminated chart listing various counterfeit items; he could get her as many as she wanted and ship them almost anywhere in the country.
A lawyer for the estate, Paul Kurland, said a short time later that the parties had settled, and said they were doing their best to rid the buildings of vendors of counterfeit items.
Mr. Kudlik told marshals that he had purchased the counterfeit items on the Internet and promised to stop masquerading as a marshal, so the marshals did not press charges.
"They're keeping up with the times," said John Morton, the director of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which plans to announce Thursday that recently it has seized about 327,000 counterfeit items worth about $77 million in the United States, along with some merchandise from Mexico.
