Four people have been arrested in West Columbia for selling multiple counterfeit items at the Metro Flea Market on Highway 1. They were trafficking illegal goods such as pirated movies and music, fake designer hand bags, coats, and other apparel. The brands that were forged included Air Jordan, Coogi, Coach, Ecko, Ed Hardy, Gucci, Nascar, NFL, Nike, Prada, and many others. The value of the products are estimated to be around $240,000. They are facing charges for trademark violation and possible charges from the music industry and motion pictures of America for the illegal copying and distributing of music and movies. Two other people are being held in connection to providing some of the trafficked goods. People are very frustrated with the inferior goods that they purchased from the illegal booth.
The bigger issue is the amount of fraud and illegal activity people are willing to do to make money these days. With the current economic condition, people are very frustrated, desperate, and need money. It's not fair that they sold goods to people under deceiful terms, but it's not a total surprise seeing that everyone needs to make money somehow. These people could have done a lot worse things to make money and therefore, I don't really think punishment will improve this. They stole from the "man" (Music Industry, MPAA, and mocked couture brands) and then sold it to the public to make some money. Considering all of those companies/brands have tons of money, I don't think these four deserve to be punished too harshly. They were wrong, but the bigger issue is that with these times where it's so very difficult to get a job, fraud will be abundant as we all need to survive.
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