690 domains seized during the joint operation of Europol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to combat the spread of counterfeit goods. The operation dubbed Transatlantic 3 became a part of a larger project called In Our Sites, carried on by law enforcement agencies of the USA and European countries from 2010. Its goal is to protect global network users from counterfeit products and infringements of their financial information.
As part of an operation 297 domains were seized in the U.S. 393 more were seized in EU countries – Belgium, the UK, Hungary, Denmark, Romania, Spain and France. All of them were associated with the spread of counterfeit products. "Counterfeiters take advantage of the holiday season and sell cheap fakes to unsuspecting consumers everywhere", pointed out ICE Acting Director John Sandweg. "Consumers need to protect themselves, their families, and their personal financial information from the criminal networks operating these bogus sites." According to the organizers, electronic accessories, shoes, toys, sporting goods with logos of popular clubs and leagues, cell phones and luxury items, in particular, expensive watch and jewelry, are among the most popular products of falsifiers for several years now.
“Unfortunately the economic downturn has meant that disposable income has gone down, which may tempt more people to buy products for prices that are too good to be true”, stressed Europol's director Rob Wainwright. “Consumers should realize that, by buying these products, they risk supporting organized crime.”
The fate of seized domains is now in the hands of governments under whose jurisdiction they operated. For now when trying to open corresponding links, browsers demonstrate a banner notifying that this resource is seized.
From 2010 as part of the project In Our Sites a total of 2550 domains involved in the spread of counterfeit products were seized.
