£1m fake clothes racket smashed

Officers from Lancashire Trading Standards raided the warehouse in Lench Road, Rawtenstall, after a tip-off that large amounts of clothing were being sent there.

Thousands of items of fake clothing stored in cardboard boxes, including Burberry, Lacoste, Stone Island, Armani, Rockport and Miss Sixty were seized.

Clothing including T-shirts, sweaters, jackets and jeans and items such as designer sunglasses were recovered.

Trading Standards chiefs believe they were destined to be sold all over the North West and said yesterday's operation was the biggest raid officers had carried out this year.

Brendan Tolan, an Essex-based investigator on behalf of the brand owners, said: "It appears the clothes are being shipped in from Pakistan to be sold all over the North West. The amount we have uncovered today has an approximate street value of £1m which would have had a great detriment to legitimate brand sales.

"This operation has been a great success in terms of getting these fake goods off the streets."

Trading Standards officer Dawn Robinson, involved in co-ordinating the operation, said: "This has come about after acting on information we have been receiving over the last couple of weeks.

"We would like to point out that the owner of the building is not connected to what we have found today. He didn't know anything about what was going on at the premises.

"Nobody has been arrested for the offence at this stage, although that is being acted upon."

In 1998, Lancashire Trading Standards seized 2,000 pairs of fake jeans and 400,000 fake rivets and buttons from a factory in Great Harwood. The goods had a street value of £2.6million.

In 2000, a campaign to encourage people to stop buying fakes was launched, pointing out the effects it had on jobs and the economy.

Lancashire County Council's Trading Standards today said that counterfeiting was still a problem, especially with items such as CDs and videos.