Maxi operation by the Turin Financial Police which seized around 500 thousand car spare parts, with counterfeit effigies of the most famous national and international car manufacturers, and numerous machinery and molds used for production. Twenty suspects will have to answer, in competition, for the manufacture and sale of counterfeit products, with the aggravating circumstance of having committed them in a systematic way and through the setting up of means and organized activities, and of receiving stolen goods. The investigations, carried out by the Economic-Financial Police Unit of Turin, coordinated by the prosecutor’s office of the Piedmontese capital, led to the discovery of the entire production and commercial chain of the fake, allowing the identification, in addition to the companies producing the spare parts, of numerous companies for distribution also through e-commerce platforms.
Searches in Piedmont, Campania, Calabria, Puglia, Basilicata, Lombardy and Tuscany. Among the spare parts seized were wheel covers, hub caps, emblems, ornamental elements and bodywork tuning, reproducing the brands of the car manufacturers. According to what emerged from the investigations, the fake car parts were produced in industrial warehouses in the Turin area, inside which 13 production lines were discovered, fully operational and professional, with various machinery for moulding, pressing, painting and silk-screen printing. and pad printing of the products made. 28 industrial machinery and 449 molds used to reproduce the brands were seized. During the searches, a storage area was identified which was used by one of the companies involved, discovered in the warehouses of a logistics company, unrelated to the facts, where over 700 m2 of space had been rented to store the counterfeit spare parts made and wheel covers intended for illicit branding. The spare parts and production lines have a commercial value estimated at over 8 million euros.
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