Fake Ferrari Stars in Anti-Piracy Show

We’ve all heard wild stories of people trying to sell others Bolex watches and Mike running shoes. But a fake Ferrari? A few have actually been spotted around before, and this one is one of them. It is on exhibit in Brussels for an awareness campaign against pirated goods. The vehicle tries to mimic a 1967 Ferrari P4 so rare that even people at Ferrari don’t own one.

How it surfaced in Thailand is no mystery. Apparently a backstreet factory exists where car like the P4 can be made to order and shipped out to customers from around the world. This one, intercepted by Thai police, was destined for a buyer in Europe, but it’s not clear yet if the potential buyer is also being sought by the long arm of the law.

The Authentics Foundation, which is using the exhibition to highlight the problem of fake goods, says these days just about anything can be faked, not just headaches. Speaking of headaches, according to the AF, 80 percent of all pharmaceuticals in Nigeria are non-authentic.

President of the Foundation Timothy P Trainer says: "It has got more complicated because now counterfeiters are into everything. Twenty years ago they were more into luxury brands and so on.
Today, they are into electronics, they are into medicine, they are into food."

Echoing Trainer’s sentiments is EU commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso: "Counterfeiting now takes place on an industrial scale. It has become an extremely profitable business, generating income that can compete with narcotics and weapons trafficking, but at much lower risk ... The days when fake goods meant shifty men with a suitcase full of Rolexes are over."