Fake Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards seized

By: JO MORELAND - Staff Writer | Tuesday, March 8, 2005 1:28 PM PST ∞

LOS ANGELES ---- The largest stash of counterfeit Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards ever recovered was seized last week at a Los Angeles warehouse, officials in Los Angeles and Carlsbad said Monday.

If they were genuine, the popular game cards would have sold for almost $3 million retail, said Don Williams, spokesman for the regional Upper Deck office in Carlsbad.

Williams said Upper Deck, a global company headquartered in Las Vegas, is the only licensed distributor of the cards outside Asia and the biggest one world-wide for the game that's struck gold with children and young adults.

"It's white hot," Williams said. "It's the world's biggest trading card game. It's bigger than Pokemon."

The Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise is based on the comic series that first appeared in Japan in 1996. The learning game is about Yugi, a young boy who has a puzzle that allows him to turn into a "Game King" when challenged.

"This was a new one for us," said Steve Lovett, supervisory unit of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's trade fraud unit in Los Angeles. "We were educated as we were going."

He said his agency believes the fake cards are being made in southern China, where many trade goods are counterfeited.

"We have no idea whether political prisoners are making this stuff or children chained to tables," Lovett said. "That's the seamy side of this."

No arrests have been made in the continuing case, officials said.

Upper Deck began the investigation and turned it over to the federal agency. Authorities said a vendor in downtown Los Angeles offered to sell an undercover federal agent 250 cartons of about 350 cases of the fake cards.

Last Wednesday federal agents seized the cards as they raided a storefront office in downtown Los Angeles and a warehouse in Vernon, a small industrial suburb in the southern section of the city.

Williams said last year a couple of pallets of counterfeit cards were confiscated at an East Coast location in the ongoing attempt to protect customers and retailers, "but this is by far the biggest (seizure)."

Upper Deck's Web site at upperdeck.com/fraud tells consumers how to help spot fake cards.

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