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Faking a Company
gambit3 writes "What happens when pirating a movie, an application, or a game is not enough for you? Well, you take the next step and pirate a whole company. It happened to Japanese electronics giant NEC. Counterfeiters had set up what amounted to a parallel NEC brand with links to a network of more than 50 electronics factories in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan."
All I can say is, wow, that is incredibly cool! What moxy! What an idea!
These guys should get a criminal Nobel or something!
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Some guy with a garbage bag of Sunglasses and Watches is a bit different then a company manufactoring goods on a massive scale and selling them in stores?
You know the guy with a garbage bag of the product is bullshitting you. But what if it was in the Sunglass Hut (tm) ?
... so why does NEC seem so upset?
This is not supposed to be called piracy of a company, it's a trademark violation, unauthorized and fraudulant usage of the NEC trademark. The affected factories claims that they have papers to prove that they were licensed to manufacturer the goods, but the papers were faked, which is considered fraud. The term 'piracy' has been utterly bastardized and overused already, please be more specific.
Please direct all bug reports to
-
andProduct Sourcing
Buy Risk Free From China IVELL - Global product sourcing
www.ivell.com
Quality Manufacturing
Plastic, electronics and metal UK Management, Chinese Factory
www.motiontouch.com
More Questions anyone?
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Did they pretend to be NEC in wholesale deals with other businessmen and the other businessmen did not they were dealing with them? I did not find it in TA.
Only because you didn't READ IT.
These records showed that the counterfeiters carried NEC business cards, commissioned product research and development in the company's name and signed production and supply orders.
Some of the factories that were raided had erected bogus NEC signs and shipped their products packaged in authentic looking boxes and display cases.
etc, etc
Oh no... it's the future.
Not quite. While Oakleys, Rolexis and other knock-offs have been manufactured for a while, this is a whole different ball game. These individuals actually lease property, negociate with suppliers and establish sales relationships in the name of NEC. They do all this under the flag of the firm's proper brand name, not some mispelling. Those are two very different scenarios. It's kind of a neat scam. It will probably inspire con-artists everywhere to try something similar. I could just imagine someone faking Hilton. They could order a large quantity of samples from a few suppliers - and pay upfront for the samples to build trust. The scammer later says they love the product and then order 5 cargo containers from each supplier on 30 days credit terms with a forged letter of credit. And then Bam! They disappear with a few million in goods to never appear again.
Exactly. This was a very well-coordinated and well-conceived plan, not something down in the backyard. This was done in the open with, as the article noted, "official-looking documents", passes, ID cards, etcetera.
This is just taking piracy to new levels. This would have taken a lot of effort, but I'm sure that it would be increasingly commonplace in years and decades to come.
As a few people have said, slapping a bodge label on a bodge product in a bodge market is something, but producing decent-quality products, as the article infers, in proper factories and sold in proper shops and retail outlets is another.
Read the article. They're not talking about putting a NEC brand on one or two shoddy items. They're talking about setting up a company and pirating the entire NEC image.
They were placing orders with factories using the NEC name. They commissioned R&D, their factories had NEC signs on the outside. They even designed and built their own products.
This is a huge step from the guy selling Oakley sunglasses. By faking the company and not just the product they were able to get their goods sold in legitimate outlets, right alongside genuine NEC products.
When you start to think about it, the scheme works on so many levels. Ordinarily you run a huge risk to create a factory producing fake goods and everybody in the factory shares that risk. That means it's massively expensive to set up and run, your staff are sub-standard and there's always the risk of blackmail. By creating a fake parent company and just ordering the goods from 'legitimate' factories, they bypassed all these problems. You've now got good cheap staff, proper management, and all in all a far more efficient service.
Even better, now the police can't prosecute these factories for producing the goods since they've done nothing wrong - they've just fulfilled orders as normal. Of course they'll have to stop production and will have their goods confiscated, but their insurance will cover that... The police have no choice but to go for the parent company. Fair enough you've now got to collapse that side of the operation but you've got nowhere near the costs. A few staff, some nice headed paper... sure beats loosing a factory.
Plus, you're no longer selling cheap pirated goods on the street. Instead you're able to charge full retail price.
In one fell swoop they've cut the costs of producing goods, made production more efficient, sold them at a higher price, and managed to legally insure the vast majority of their pirate production line against the risk of getting caught.
Genius, sheer genius. Yes it's illegal, but you can't help but be impressed. Somebody somewhere deserves serious Kudos for coming up with this.
I was looking at a chinese electronics manufacturers page some time ago, and they had a bulletin board.
One of the posts effectively consisted of "Can you make me some tv's branded panasonic and send them to north africa"
Tip of the iceberg, perhaps.
Hi, Bill Gates here. I'd like you to visit my new site:
http://www.m1cr0s0ft.com/
I've been faking being an employee for years :o)
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
It was already done, here, in the US: it was called "Enron".
i'd guess because NEC is a well known brand without having so many existing deals with retailers/distributors that it would be difficult to set up such deals for the clone company
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
And I thought the guys who claimed to work for the railway company and started removing the rails of an abandoned line not far from where I livedhad been something!
The hired local companies for transport and even distributed leaflets to the people in the neighbarhood informing them of the upcomming works! They made some money from the scrap iron before anybody noticed!
How do we know the reporters were getting comments from the real NEC executives?
An aquaintance recently went to China to visit a factory that makes the sony bean mp3 players. They told him they could make the players for him and just leave the sony logo off it. He then plans to sell them on ebay.
I tried to explain how bad an idea this was and how there are so many other legal ways to invest your money, but he wouldnt hear it.
Just a thought. Seriously though, if I was NEC, I would try and by up the fake company and continue to operate it. you could probably get it for pennies on the dollar and you already have trained employees.
So... these people set up a company, did legitimate business, developed products, shipped and sold products. They did everything any other company does, except come up with their own name and logo.
Perhaps these "official-looking documents", passes, ID cards, etcetera, *were* official. Perhaps they were just issued by the bizzaro-NEC that was stepping on the real NEC's name. That's could still be nothing more than trademark infringment.
There is nothing here that even resembles piracy, or copyright infringment, or theft. These people used the NEC mark, and the real NEC is pissed. These guys were able to exploit the ease with which NEC could close business deals for manufacturing, or marketing a product. They have been riding in on the coattails of a large company with an established brand *by infringing their trademark*.
I'm a fan of NEC's burners and happily recommend the brand to my friends. Good stuff.
One of these friends said "Wow, I am sure am glad I get my NEC stuff from a reputable online dealer, like Newegg!"
My question is, where'd Newegg get these drives? Did their distributor vouch for the goods? How about their distributor's distributor or the originating factory?
When somebody up the chain said "I _KNOW_ these are good drives" and vouched for them, then that product carried that credential all the way to the end users and that's what we're trusting. But we don't know, really.
"It came from Newegg" might be nice sentiment but Newegg probably has no idea if they were selling fakes or not. I don't think they would knowingly do so, of course. That kind of cheap money is not worth the hassle with an IPO in the works.
Sig for hire.
It is quite simple compare business case number 1:
1) Buy generic mp3 player innards off general market for next to nothing
2) Wrap iPod shuffle lookalike plastic
3) Sell as iPod
4) Profit
Compare with business case number 2:
1) Buy generic mp3 player innards off general market for next to nothing
2) Pay designer to design a cool funky faux iPodesque white plastic exterior
3) Pay huge international marketing firm to make worldwide humongously expensive marketing campaign
4) Rummage through garbage for scraps of food, use cardboard for shelter
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
This article has the ere is no need to
most hard to read create a stupid column
format for the text based layout. These
I have ever seen. The guys should be shot.
web != the newspaper, th-
And look, there's Magnetbox and Sorny.
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
...there's a place near here that's doing the same thing with a whole industry/product line - couterfeit food. Luckily, they're easy to spot, all being labelled with a big bright yellow M,...
Of course, once this 'faked company' meme has taken hold, the multinationals will exploit it to the full by making sure all their outsourced third world factories and production centres can be turned into 'pirate' factories at short notice:
... that's not us! Yeah, that's it! They're a bunch of pirates who made a fake MegaCorp factory! We've never seen those guys in our lives! Officer! Arrest that factory! Secretary - type me up a shoddy-looking forgery of our licensing agreement. "Fake" factory workers - You're all fired! Back to unemployment and poverty for you!
Bleeding heart liberal type: You're running sweatshops and paying 12 year olds 10 cents for an 18 hour working day! You're pumping toxic chemicals into the drinking water supply! You're making defective products that explode and kill people! You bribe politicians!
Your factories are run by fascist thugs who hire death squads to kill union organisers! And we have proof this time! You're going to jail at long last!
CEO of MegaCorp, your friendly neighbourhood planet-raping multinational: Errr umm
Third World Workers: Sigh. Shafted again...
A WIC-1DSU-T1-V2 is $1,000 list, $700 or so to a small reseller in distribution, and $400 for a clean used unit from a reliable aftermarket dealer. Go look for that part number on Ebay and check out how new boxed product is 15% of list price
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
A close relative told me the company he works for has an a little secret that no one talks about. Seems after setting up a partnership with a chinese company to outsorce production (eliminate local jobs) they went to china to further the deal. Production lines were seen, hands shaken, and everthing was going along nicely. Before getting on the planes to go home someone had to return to the "factory" for something they forgot. It sould seem that thieves had made off with the workers and were taking down the "factory". I don't think the theives got too much money, but today no one at X corp. will mentions foreign investment without a quick look and a cautionary tale. Probably just a story told by the middle management to explain a lack of ambition, maybe. Ahh capitalism... don't ya just love the smell?
They can have my command prompt when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
That's nothing, right now we have a dictator faking a democracy in the US. Beat that pirates!