More than 3,000 counterfeit Gibson guitars were recently seized at the Los Angeles-Long Beach Seaport, according to a joint statement from federal and local law enforcement agencies.
If the guitars were authentic, their total manufacturer’s suggested retail price would be approximately $18.74 million, making the counterfeit musical instrument seizure the largest on record, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers and import specialists assigned to the port said in an announcement.
“These fraudulent guitars may look and feel legitimate for unsuspecting consumers buying them from third party online sources, street markets, unauthorized retailers, and person-to-person transactions,” Cheryl Davies, the CBP’s director of field operations in Los Angeles said in a statement. “As we approach the busy holiday shopping season, consumers should pay attention to where they are buying these goods and how much they are paying, and if [it] is too good to be true it probably is.”
Customs officials said they coordinated with U.S. Homeland Security Investigations special agents and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigators to intercept the cargo, which was arriving in ocean freight containers from Asia. The news release did not say exactly where the fake guitars came from. CBP’s Consumer Products and Mass Merchandising Center of Excellence assisted in estimating the value of the products.
The company also confirmed the intercepted guitars were fake, as authentic Gibson guitars are made only in the U.S. Some of the company’s best selling models include the Les Paul, the Flying V and the SG.
“We are grateful for the hard work that our U.S. CBP officers, HSI special agents, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigators are doing to stop counterfeiting,” Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian said. “Our partnership is designed to help every agency work together to protect consumers and our fans from being misled into counterfeits. Today’s announcement gives us hope that we are on the right track, working together as partners.”
Beth Heidt, Gibson’s chief marketing officer, said in a statement that the merchandise seizure news “is really emotional and personal for us” because generations of American families have dedicated their lives to handcrafting Gibson musical instruments at the company’s manufacturing facilities in Nashville, Tennessee and Bozeman, Montana.
In fiscal year 2023, CBP said it seized 19,724 shipments containing goods that violated intellectual property rights. Had they been authentic, authorities said the total MSRP of the seized goods was over $2.7 billion.
