Author: adminficci

Women Arrested For Tobacco Smuggling

A 24 year old woman has been arrested by Phitshane Molopo Police, in connection to a case in which Tobacco worth 200 Thousand Pula was smuggled into the country. Speaking to Gabz Fm News this Morning, Assistant Superintendent Benjamin Modimo-osi said the Police got a tip off from reliable sources, that certain vehicles suspected to be carrying tobacco were at the border. Modimo-osi said upon arrival at the border, the suspects fled the scene but Police later discovered one of the cars was registered in the woman’s name. She told the Police that even though the car is registered in her names, her South African ex boyfriend, whom she broke up with 2 years ago, had been the one using it on the day it was discovered. The car was carrying 46 boxes with 50 cartons, containing 20 cigarettes each

Plain tobacco packaging may fuel black market

Big supermarket chains and small dairy owners are warning plain tobacco packaging will slash their profits, and fuel the black market for cigarettes.  Trina Snow from the Association of Retail Grocers, which represents those stores, has told a select committee plain packaging would make it easier to counterfeit tobacco products.  “At the moment cigarette packets have got lots of designs and embossing on them which are hard to replicate. When you go to plain packaging, everybody’s got the design, it all looks the same so it’s going to be very easy to replicate any cigarette and just put the brand name on it.”  Plunket and health experts have today made submissions supporting the proposed law change.

EU Regulators Warn of Counterfeit Copies of Cancer Drug Herceptin

EU regulators have issued a warning that several batches of the cancer medicine Herceptin (trastuzumab) have been “tampered with,” falsified and reintroduced into the supply chain, potentially putting patients at risk.

High-cost cancer medications like Herceptin have become an increasingly tempting target for thieves and counterfeiters in recent years. While they lack the ready market that some drugs like Viagra have, their extraordinary cost means extraordinary paydays. US officials warned of a similar scare in February 2012, when counterfeit copies of Roche’s Avastin (bevacizumab) were found to have infiltrated the US supply chain. Another batch of the counterfeit drug was found in April 2012.

In the wake of those findings, FDA went after more than a dozen physicians, who were blamed for purchasing the Avastin from unauthorized suppliers in the pursuit of higher profit margins.

Tiny Particles could Help Verify Counterfeit Goods

Chemical engineers hope smartphone-readable microparticles could crack down on counterfeiting.

Some 2 to 5 percent of all international trade involves counterfeit goods, according to a 2013 United Nations report. These illicit products — which include electronics, automotive, and aircraft parts, pharmaceuticals, and food — can pose safety risks and cost governments and private companies hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Many strategies have been developed to try to label legitimate products and prevent illegal trade — but these tags are often too easy to fake, are unreliable, or cost too much to implement, according to MIT researchers who have developed a new alternative.

http://www.wirelessdesignmag.com/news/2014/04/tiny-particles-could-help-verify-counterfeit-goods

Soon, smart phone to help detect counterfeit goods

What about a smartphone-readable device that can help authenticate currency, electronic parts and luxury goods to minimise counterfeit? Chemical engineers from Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) have invented a new type of tiny, smartphone-readable particle that is invisible to the naked eye, contain colored stripes of nanocrystals that glow brightly when lit up with near-infrared light. “These particles can easily be manufactured and integrated into a variety of materials and can withstand extreme temperatures, sun exposure and heavy wear,” explained Patrick Doyle, a chemical engineering professor at MIT. They could also be equipped with sensors that can “record” their environments. To manufacture the particles, the researchers used stop-flow lithography, a technique developed previously by Doyle. Many strategies have been developed to try to label legitimate products and prevent illegal trade – but these tags are often too easy to fake, the researchers found. Using this procedure, the researchers can generate vast quantities of unique tags.

http://www.siasat.com/english/news/soon-smart-phone-help-detect-counterfeit-goods

Customs seeks data server of passenger info to check smuggling

Mumbai: The spurt in gold and drugs smuggling cases has prompted Mumbai Airport Customs to seek a separate data server of air passengers’ detailed information available with immigration authorities, and three more sniffer dogs to clamp down on smugglers at the international airport. Immigration authorities currently have the data server which stores the details of every air passenger flying in and out of the country. This information is required for the purposes of ensuring aviation safety and security. However, the Customs currently does not have a separate data server with air passenger information.

“If we have such data server on air passengers, we can go for data analysis, storage, archiving, and other tasks to hunt down suspects from lakhs of passengers. So we sought the higher authorities to provide us such date server,” a Customs official told PTI.

http://zeenews.india.com/news/maharashtra/customs-seeks-data-server-of-passenger-info-to-check-smuggling_924125.html

Fight Against Online Sale of Fakes Goes on for Alibaba Group

In an ongoing battle against the online sale of counterfeit merchandise, Alibaba Group, China’s largest operator of Web shopping platforms, removed an estimated 114 million listings for suspected fake goods from the company’s giant Taobao Marketplace during the first ten months of 2013. The listing take-downs, which increased by 31 percent compared with the number of take-downs in the full year of 2012, are part of a comprehensive effort by Alibaba Group to curb intellectual property rights (IPR) infringement on its Taobao Marketplace, Alibaba.com, AliExpress, and Tmall.com e-commerce websites, according to company officials. Alibaba’s online marketplaces host millions of independent vendors. Policing the sites for counterfeit goods is an ongoing challenge, but one that must be met to protect the rights of consumers and brand owners, Alibaba executives have said. At a press conference last year announcing an with Chinese government and law enforcement agencies, Alibaba Group Executive Chairman Jack Ma called China’s highly organized counterfeiting industry a “cancer in society.” Alibaba recently issued a statement on its position on piracy: “Alibaba Group is highly committed to the protection of intellectual property rights and the fight against counterfeiting. The company works with brands, associations, government agencies and other stakeholders to create visible and significant results in the intellectual property enforcement space.”

City cracking down on illegal tobacco sales

A new tobacco retailers licensing program will add some teeth to existing state requirements and provide the City of Morgan Hill with more funds to conduct decoy operations to nab vendors who might sell cigarettes or other tobacco products to children, city staff said.

The council unanimously approved the first reading of an ordinance on the advice of the Morgan Hill Police Department. Capt. Jerry Neumayer said just before the council’s decision that the program would advance the council’s goals of “supporting youth and enhancing public safety priorities.”

150 tobacco packs meant for illegal sale seized

(MENAFN – Muscat Daily) The Department of Inquiries and Criminal Investigations at the Seeb police station has arrested an Asian national for possessing a large quantity of smoking tobacco for sale illegally.  An official said that the police station received a tip-off that a man was illegally selling various tobacco products in the Seeb market. ”The man was put under surveillance and arrested when he was driving away to sell the products. More than 150 packets of tobacco were recovered from him.