A man has been arrested, and police have seized more than 62,000 suspected counterfeit luxury items following a multi-agency investigation into a social-media-based distribution operation, Rowlett police say.<\/p>\n
In a press release, police say the investigation began Feb. 9 after they got a tip that the counterfeit merchandise was being sold through Facebook Live and distributed from different locations in Rowlett.<\/p>\n
Police say, on Feb. 17, detectives arrested one man and seized 62,694 pieces of suspected counterfeit merchandise, about $208,000 and a 2017 Chevrolet Silverado.<\/p>\n
Police say if the counterfeit items were authentic, they would be worth more than $101.6 million and hold an estimated street value of about $995,276.<\/p>\n
Officials say Orlando Gonzalez Marcella has been charged with trademark counterfeiting more than $300,000, a first-degree felony, and is currently in the Dallas County Jail. Rowlett police say an arrest warrant has been issued for Aida Karina Lopez Alvarrez, who remains at large.<\/p>\n
“Counterfeiting is not a victimless crime,” Rowlett Chief Michael Denning said in a statement. “Operations like this deceive consumers, harm legitimate businesses, and often fund broader criminal activity.”<\/p>\n
Officials say the investigation involved the Rowlett Police Department, Texas Department of Public Safety, Van Zandt County Sheriff’s Office, and Homeland Security Investigations, along with anti-counterfeit experts representing brands including Cartier, Chanel, Dior, Coach, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Prada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been arrested, and police have seized more than 62,000 suspected counterfeit luxury items following a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[78176,78178,78177,8347,27,6877,29,28,55741],"class_list":{"0":"post-197854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-counterfeit-merchandise","9":"tag-distribution-operation","10":"tag-luxury-items","11":"tag-rowlett-police-department","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-texas-department-of-public-safety","14":"tag-texas-headlines","15":"tag-texas-news","16":"tag-the-investigation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}