Europol and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), with 11 law enforcement agencies from eight countries, have seized 188 domain names that were illegally selling counterfeit merchandise online.
The 188 domain names seized are part of project ‘In Our Sites (IOS) – Transatlantic 4’. The websites were set up to dupe consumers into buying counterfeit products. The operation was coordinated by Europol for the participating EU Member States (Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom) and the HSI-led National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center) in Washington, DC for the US.
Counterfeit products being sold online not only rip the consumer off and provide shoddy products, the European law enforcement body says, but also put their personal financial information at risk. The most popular counterfeit products concerned include headphones, sports jerseys, personal care products, shoes, toys, luxury goods, cell phones and electronic accessories. Europol and the IPR Center received leads from trademark holders regarding the infringing websites. Those leads were disseminated to law enforcers in the affected countries.
The domain names seized are now in the custody of the governments involved in these operations. Visitors typing those domain names into their web browsers will now find a banner that notifies them of the seizure and educates them about the crime of wilful copyright infringement.
Project ‘In Our Sites’ is a law enforcement initiative that began by targeting the sale of counterfeit merchandise on the Internet. The 188 domain names seized under Operation In Our Sites 4 – Transatlantic bring the total number of IOS domain names seized to 1349 since the IOS Transatlantic project began in November 2012. Visit https://www.europol.europa.eu.
