Noor Ahmed put together fake watches and sold them cheap, but his wild popularity did him in
Noor Ahmed put together fake watches and sold them cheap, but his wild popularity did him in
Noor Ahmed (36), owner of Time Gift and Home Appliance, became famous overnight for selling watches of a famous brand dirt-cheap.
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The booty: Counterfeit watch parts seized by the police |
If you went to his shop in Tumkur, you could pick up a watch priced at Rs 1,500 or more for just Rs 150.
Little did he know that his fame would soon land him in trouble. Within days of his business picking up, sleuths from a private agency called Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights, with help from the Tumkur police, landed at his door. The police confiscated his dials, straps, and an embossing machine.
Ahmed had bought genuine watches and handed them over as samples to a dial manufacturer. He then ordered dials in bulk at the rate rate of Rs 20 a piece.
Ahmed embossed the batch and code numbers on the dial to make the watches look genuine. Customers started thronging his shop, police told MiD DAY. "He told them he had a special deal with the manufacturer, which is why he could sell so cheap," he a policeman said.
Ahmed used the backyard of his store to assemble the fake watches. "A watch cost him Rs 50 and he sold it for between Rs 150 and Rs 200," EIPR vice president Gulfaraz Makhani said.
Policemen were in for a surprise when they spoke to customers. Many said they knew the watches were fake but had still bought it.
"This was a local racket, but many are counterfeiting and releasing such products on a big scale," Makhani said.
The counterfeit syndicates are so well organised that they divide markets and their areas of operation.
Making of the fakes
>>Noor Ahmed bought genuine watches and got the dials replicated at Rs 20 a piece. He bought watch movements in bulk.
>>He then embossed batch and code numbers on the dials to make them look genuine.u00a0
>>A fake cost him Rs 50; he made a profit of about Rs 100 on each watch.
