Once Zippo's private eyes discover a cache, they can call in the Administration for Industry & Commerce (AIC), a civic organization in China that has the power to seize and destroy counterfeits.
One result, Mr. Guzmán said, was that instead of destroying counterfeit bills, Ecuador now "sends our bad notes intact to the United States so that their characteristics can be studied and identified".
To obtain a refund, the buyer must destroy the counterfeit good.
They did not, however, destroy the sweet counterfeit Nikes the robot bought.
In 1999, in an earlier matter, Quality King agreed to destroy $1 million worth of counterfeit Paul Mitchell products.
Drugmakers also have a strong incentive to make sure all drugs sold under their name including reimported ones are safe, because a few incidents of counterfeiting could destroy their reputation and sales.
If the authority ultimately determines that the goods are counterfeit or pirated, the customs authority must destroy them or otherwise dispose of them outside of commercial channels (Article 8(1)).
The brands' willingness to invest in order to stamp out counterfeiting means they are spending millions to find and destroy such deliveries.
LONDON — Counterfeiting is a persistent problem in the world of haute horlogerie: Jean-Daniel Pasche, president of the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, estimates that the organization destroys about a million counterfeit watches every year.
"The best way to insure that a counterfeit artwork doesn't resurface in the art world is to destroy or deface it," said Catherine Begley, a former special agent in the New York office of the FBI.
