This past Sunday there was a big hit on a store in Indianapolis.  The store was selling hundreds of thousands dollars in fake merchandise posing as brands such as Nike, Gucci, Oakley, UGG, Polo, Otterbox, Coach, NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB. The items confiscated included clothing such as shoes, hats and shirts, along with other items like cell phone cases and unlicensed copies of DVD movies.

According to the reports, the Indiana Excise officers searched the store from about 11 a.m. until about 5:30 p.m. totaling more than 6 hours spent searching and retrieving items from the store. A trailer and two U Haul trucks helped to move all of the items and merchandise out of the site area.

The investigation is going forward and will brought to the Mario County Prosecutor's Office. No arrests were made at the time this case was reported on Sunday night.

It is to be seen what will happen to the store and its owners moving forward. It may show to be a big trial though - as this case involved $500,000 in fake items which is a sizable amount of money in counterfeit merchandise.

While this report is different from our reports on fake money it still is a similar problem people can be dealt with when out on the road and looking to buy merchandise. This report is similar to stories coming out about fake sports merchandise, where people are reportedly selling fake t-shirts, hats and under team branded items as real merchandise form the teams and organizations themselves.

Items from the Indianapolis Store

An agency as reported in the WKYC article recommends to buy sports items from established retailers and be careful about anyone selling merchandised items at unusually low prices.  For NFL items in particular and some other sports organizations, you can also look for a hologram to verify that it is more likely to be authentic such as the NFL hologram that is displayed on authentic National Football League merchandise.

We can have similar discretions when it comes to brands like UGG, Nike and Gucci when out shopping for clothing and items to be sure we are buying the real thing.

For some of these companies we can sometimes verify with the companies themselves to see that a vendor selling their items is authentic and not a knock off brand. In any case as this report shows with this store, it can always pay to keep a look out when out shopping for merchandise and anything else, to check to make sure what we are buying is real and not any knock off brands like what happened in this store in East Indanapolis.