WEBVTT

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Two years ago, I set off
from Central London on the Tube

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and ended up somewhere
in the east of the city

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walking into a self storage unit

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to meet a guy that had
2,000 luxury polo shirts for sale.

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And as I made my way down the corridor,

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a broken, blinking light made it
just like the cliche scene

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from a gangster movie.

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Our man was early, and he was
waiting for me in front of a unit

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secured with four padlocks down the side.

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On our opening exchange,

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it was like a verbal sparring match,

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where he threw the first punches.

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Who was I?

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Did I have a business card?

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And where was I going to sell?

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And then, he just started opening up,

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and it was my turn.

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Where were the polo shirts coming from?

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What paperwork did he have?

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And when was his next
shipment going to arrive?

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I was treading the fine between
asking enough questions

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to get what I needed

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and not enough for him
to become suspicious,

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because what he didn't know

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is that I'm a counterfeit investigator,

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and after 20 minutes or so
of checking over the product

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for the telltale signs
of counterfeit production,

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say, badly stitched labels
or how the packaging

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had a huge brand logo
stamped all over the front of it,

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I was finally on my way out,

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but not before he insisted
on walking down to the street with me

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and back to the station.

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And the feeling after these meetings
is always the same:

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my heart is beating like a drum,

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because you never know
if they've actually bought your story,

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or they're going to start following you
to see who you really are.

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Relief only comes when
you turn the first corner

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and glance behind
and they're not standing there.

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But what our counterfeit
polo shirt seller certainly didn't realize

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is that everything I'd seen and heard
would result in a dawn raid on his house,

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him being woken out of bed

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by eight men on his doorstep
and all his product seized.

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But this would reveal
that he was just a pawn

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at the end of a counterfeiting network
spanning three continents,

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and he was just the first loose thread
that I'd started to pull on

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in the hope that it would all unravel.

NOTE Paragraph

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Why go through all that trouble?

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Well, maybe counterfeiting
is a victimless crime?

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These big companies,
they make enough money,

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so if anything,

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counterfeiting is just
a free form of advertising, right?

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And consumers believe just that,

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that the buying and selling of fakes

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is not that big a deal.

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But I'm here to tell you
that that is just not true.

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What the tourist on holiday doesn't see
about those fake handbags

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is they may well
have been stitched together

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by a child that was trafficked
away from her family,

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and what the car repair shop
owner doesn't realize

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about those fake brake pads

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is they may well be lining the products

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with an organized crime gang

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involved in drugs and prostitution.

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And while those two things
are horrible to think about,

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it gets much worse,

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because counterfeiting
is even funding terrorism.

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Let that sink in for a moment.

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Terrorists are selling fakes
to fund attacks,

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attacks in our cities

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that try to make victims of all of us.

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You wouldn't buy a live scorpion

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because there is chance that it
would sting you on the way home,

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but would you still buy a fake handbag

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if you knew the profits

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would enable someone to buy bullets

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that would kill you and other
innocent people six months later?

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Maybe not.

NOTE Paragraph

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Okay, time to come clean.

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In my youth, yeah,

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I might look like I'm still
clinging on to it a bit,

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I bought fake watches while on holiday
in the Canary Islands.

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But why do I tell you this?

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Well, we've all done it,

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or we know someone that's done it,

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and until this very moment, maybe
you didn't think twice about it,

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and nor did I,

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until I answered a 20-word cryptic advert

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to become an intellectual
property investigator.

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It said, "full training given
and some international travel."

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Within a week, I was creating
my first of many aliases,

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and in the 10 years since,
I've investigated fake car parts,

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??. fake tech grooming tools,

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fake bicycle parts,

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and, of course,
the counterfeiter's favorite,

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fake luxury leather goods,
clothing and shoes.

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And what I've learned in the 10 years
of investigating fakes

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is that once you start
to scratch the surface,

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you find that they are rotten to the core,

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as are the people and organizations

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that are making money from them,

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because they are profiting
on a massive, massive scale.

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You can only make around
a hundred to 200 percent

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selling drugs on the street.

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You can make 2,000 percent
selling fakes online

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with little of the same
risks or penalties.

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And this quick, easy money
then goes on to fund

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the more serious types of crime,

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and it pays the way to making
these organizations,

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these criminal organizations,
look more legitimate.

NOTE Paragraph

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So let me bring you in on a live case.

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Earlier this year, a series
of raids took place

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in one of my longest-running
investigations.

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Five warehouses were raided in Turkey,

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and over two million finished
counterfeit clothing products were seized,

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and it took 16 trucks
to take that all away.

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But this gang had been clever.

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They had gone through the lengths
of creating their own fashion brands

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complete with registered trademarks

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and even having photoshoots
on yachts in Italy.

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And they would use these
completely unheard-of

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and unsuspicious brand names
as a way of shipping container loads

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of fakes to shell companies
that they'd set up across Europe.

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And documents found during those raids
found that they'd been falsifying

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shipping documents

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so the customs officials
would literally have no idea

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who had sent the products
in the first place.

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When police got access
to just one bank account,

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they found nearly three million euros

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had been laundered out of Spain
in less than two years,

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and just two days after those raids,

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that gang were trying to bribe a law firm

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to get their stock back.

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Even now, we have no idea
where all that money went,

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to who it went to, but you can bet

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it's never going to benefit
the likes of you or me.

NOTE Paragraph

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But these aren't just
low-level street thugs.

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They're business professionals,
and they fly first class.

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They trick legitimate businesses
with convincing fake invoices

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and paperwork,

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so everything just seems real,

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and then they set up eBay
and Amazon accounts

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just to compete with the people
they've already sold fakes to.

NOTE Paragraph

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But this isn't just happening online.

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For a few years, I also used to attend

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automotive trade shows

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taking place in huge exhibition spaces,

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but away from the Ferraris
and the Bentleys and the flashing lights,

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there'd be companies selling fakes,

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companies with a brochure on the counter

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and another one underneath
if you ask them the right questions.

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And they would sell me fake car parts,
faulty fake car parts

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that have been estimated to cause
over 36,000 fatalities,

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deaths on our roads each year.

NOTE Paragraph

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Counterfeiting is set to become
a 2.3 trillion dollar underground economy,

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and the damage that can be done
with that kind of money,

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it's really frightening,

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because fakes fund terror.

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Fake trainers on the streets of Paris,

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fake cigarettes in West Africa,

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and pirate music CDs in the USA

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have all gone on to fund
terrorist training camps,

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bought weapons and ammunition,
or the ingredients for explosives.

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In June 2014, the French security services

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stopped monitoring the communications
of Said and Cherif Kouachi,

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the two brothers who had
been on a watchlist,

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a terror watchlist, for three years.

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But that summer, they were only
picking up that Cherif was buying

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fake trainers from China,

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so it signaled a shift away from extremism

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into what was considered
a low level, petty crime.

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The threat had gone away.

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Seven months later, the two brothers
walked into the offices

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of Charlie Hebdo magazine
and killed 12 people,

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wounded 11 more,

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with guns from
the proceeds of those fakes.

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So whatever you think, this isn't
a faraway problem happening in China.

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It's happening right here.

NOTE Paragraph

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And Paris is not unique.

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Ten years earlier, in 2004,
191 people lost their lives

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when a Madrid commuter train was bombed.

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The attack had been partly funded
by the sale of pirate music CDs in the US.

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Two years prior to that,
an al Qaeda training manual

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recommended explicitly

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selling fakes as a good way
of supporting terror cells.

NOTE Paragraph

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But despite this, despite the evidence
connecting terrorism and counterfeiting,

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we do go on buying them,
increasing the demand

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to the point where there's even a store

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in Turkey called "I Love Genuine Fakes."

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And you have tourists posing
with photographs on TripAdvisor

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giving it five star reviews.

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But would those same tourists
have gone into a store called

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"I Love Genuine Fake Viagra Pills"

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or "I Genuinely Love Funding Terrorism"?

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I doubt it.

NOTE Paragraph

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Many of us think

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that we're completely helpless
against organized crime and terrorism,

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that we can do nothing
about the next attack,

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but I believe you can.

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You can by becoming investigators too.

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The way we cripple these networks
is to cut their funding,

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and that means cutting the demand
and changing this idea

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that it's a victimless crime.

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Let's all identify counterfeiters

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and don't give them our money.

NOTE Paragraph

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So here's a few tips
from one investigator to another

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to get you started.

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Number one:

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here's a typical online
counterfeiter's website.

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Note the URL.

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If you're shopping for sunglasses
or camera lenses, say,

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and you come across a website
like medical-insurance-bankruptcy.com,

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start to get very suspicious.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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But counterfeiters register
expired domain names as a way

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of keeping up the old website's
Google page ranking.

NOTE Paragraph

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Number two: is the website
screaming at you that everything

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is 100 percent genuine,

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but still giving you 75 percent
off the latest collection?

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Look for words like "master copy,"

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"overruns," "straight from the factory."

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They could write this all in comic sans,
it's that much of a joke.

NOTE Paragraph

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Number three: if you get
as far as the checkout page,

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and you don't see "https"
or a padlock symbol next to the URL,

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you should really start thinking
about closing the tab,

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because these indicate
active security measures

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that will keep your personal
and credit card information safe.

NOTE Paragraph

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Okay, last one:

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go hunting for the "Contact Us" page.

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If you can only find a generic webform,

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no company name, telephone number,
email address, postal address,

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that's it, case closed.

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You found a counterfeiter.

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Sadly, you're going to have
to go back to Google

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and start your shopping
search all over again,

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but you didn't get ripped off,
so that's only a good thing.

NOTE Paragraph

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As the world's most famous
fictional detective would say,

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"Watson, the game is afoot."

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Only this time, my investigator friends,

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the game is painfully real.

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So the next time you're shopping online,

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or perhaps wherever it is,

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look closer, question a little bit deeper,

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and ask yourself, before
you hand over the cash

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or click "Buy,"

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am I sure this is real?

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Tell your friend that used
to buy counterfeit watches

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that you may just have brought
the next attack one day closer.

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And, if you see an Instagram
advert for fakes,

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don't keep scrolling past,

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report it to the platform as a scam.

NOTE Paragraph

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Let's shine a light on
the dark forces of counterfeiting

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that are hiding in plain sight.

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So please, spread the word

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and don't stop investigating.

NOTE Paragraph

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Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Applause)