Two years ago, I set off from central London on the Tube and ended up somewhere in the east of the city walking into a self-storage unit to meet a guy that had 2,000 luxury polo shirts for sale. And as I made my way down the corridor, a broken, blinking light made it just like the cliche scene from a gangster movie. Our man was early, and he was waiting for me in front of a unit secured with four padlocks down the side. On our opening exchange, it was like a verbal sparring match where he threw the first punches. Who was I? Did I have a business card? And where was I going to sell? And then, he just started opening up, and it was my turn. Where were the polo shirts coming from? What paperwork did he have? And when was his next shipment going to arrive? I was treading the fine line between asking enough questions to get what I needed and not enough for him to become suspicious, because what he didn't know is that I'm a counterfeit investigator,
两年前,我在伦敦中心区乘坐地铁 到了东伦敦的某处, 我走进一间自存仓, 会见一个有2000件高档 Polo衫出售的家伙。 当时我从走廊往下走, 一盏坏了的,不停闪烁的灯 使这一切看起来 像是某部黑帮电影中的惯用情节。 我要见的人早到了,他正等着我, 他的背后是一个周边 装着四把锁扣的柜子。 在我们开始的谈话里, 我们就像参加了一场争吵比赛, 他率先向我挥出重击。 我是谁? 我有名片吗? 我准备去哪卖这些货? 然后,既然他开了场, 现在轮到我了。 这些Polo衫都是哪来的? 你有什么文件吗? 他的下批货什么时候到? 我当时正划出一条界线, 这条线能让我问足够多 的问题来知道我需要的, 同时也不会多到让他生疑。 因为他不知道的是, 我是一个假货调查员。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
and after 20 minutes or so of checking over the product for the telltale signs of counterfeit production -- say, badly stitched labels or how the packaging had a huge brand logo stamped all over the front of it -- I was finally on my way out, but not before he insisted on walking down to the street with me and back to the station.
在花了大约20分钟 检查产品是假货的证据—— 比如,缝纫糟糕的标签 或者包装上面有一个巨大 的品牌商标——之后, 我终于从那里出来了, 但是是在他坚持陪着我走到街道上, 再回到那间自存仓之后。
And the feeling after these meetings is always the same: my heart is beating like a drum, because you never know if they've actually bought your story, or they're going to start following you to see who you really are. Relief only comes when you turn the first corner and glance behind, and they're not standing there. But what our counterfeit polo shirt seller certainly didn't realize is that everything I'd seen and heard would result in a dawn raid on his house, him being woken out of bed by eight men on his doorstep and all his product seized. But this would reveal that he was just a pawn at the end of a counterfeiting network spanning three continents, and he was just the first loose thread that I'd started to pull on in the hope that it would all unravel.
所有这类会见的感觉都是一样的: 我的心跳加速, 因为你不知道他们 是不是听信了你所说的, 或者他们会不会跟踪你, 看看你到底是谁。 当你拐过第一个路口时, 瞥瞥后面,确定他们 没站在那,你才能松一口气。 不过我们的假冒Polo衫 卖家没想到的是, 所有我看到和听到的,会导致 一场黎明时分针对他房子的突袭, 他被8个出现在家门口 的男人从床上弄醒, 他所有的产品被查封了。 但是不久我们发现他不过是 一个横跨三大洲假货集团 末端的一个小卒子。 他只是我希望解开而开始着手 拉出的线团的第一根线。
Why go through all that trouble? Well, maybe counterfeiting is a victimless crime? These big companies, they make enough money, so if anything, counterfeiting is just a free form of advertising, right? And consumers believe just that -- that the buying and selling of fakes is not that big a deal. But I'm here to tell you that that is just not true. What the tourist on holiday doesn't see about those fake handbags is they may well have been stitched together by a child who was trafficked away from her family, and what the car repair shop owner doesn't realize about those fake brake pads is they may well be lining the pockets of an organized crime gang involved in drugs and prostitution. And while those two things are horrible to think about, it gets much worse, because counterfeiting is even funding terrorism. Let that sink in for a moment.
干嘛弄得那么麻烦呢? 毕竟,也许造假只是一种 不怎么伤害人的罪行? 这些大公司赚的钱够多了, 如果真要说有什么的话, 造假也算是打了个免费广告,对吧? 消费者也相信 买卖假货不是什么大不了的事。 但我想告诉你们,事实不是这样。 假日里购物的游客看不到的是, 这些假包可能是由一个孩子缝制的, 而这个孩子是从家里被绑架的, 修车店老板没注意到的是, 这些假冒的刹车片 可能正在充实从事毒品,妓女交易的 组织犯罪帮派的钱包。 如果这两件事听起来已经够可怕了, 还有更可怕的, 因为假货甚至还在资助恐怖主义。 让我来详细说明一下。
Terrorists are selling fakes to fund attacks, attacks in our cities that try to make victims of all of us. You wouldn't buy a live scorpion, because there's a chance that it would sting you on the way home, but would you still buy a fake handbag if you knew the profits would enable someone to buy bullets that would kill you and other innocent people six months later? Maybe not.
恐怖分子一直在通过 出售假货来资助恐怖袭击, 在我们城市的恐怖袭击, 想要伤害我们所有人。 你不会买只活蝎子, 因为在你回家的路上 有可能它会蜇你一下。 但你是否还是会买一个假包, 当你知道这笔交易 的利润将资助某个人 在六个月后去买子弹 杀掉你和另外一些无辜的人? 也许你不会再买了。
OK, time to come clean. In my youth -- yeah, I might look like I'm still clinging on to it a bit -- I bought fake watches while on holiday in the Canary Islands. But why do I tell you this? Well, we've all done it, or we know someone that's done it. And until this very moment, maybe you didn't think twice about it, and nor did I, until I answered a 20-word cryptic advert to become an intellectual property investigator. It said "Full training given and some international travel." Within a week, I was creating my first of many aliases, and in the 10 years since, I've investigated fake car parts, alloy wheels, fake pet grooming tools, fake bicycle parts, and, of course, the counterfeiter's favorite, fake luxury leather goods, clothing and shoes.
下面我要澄清一下。 在我年轻时, 是的,我也许看起来 好像还挺年轻—— 我在加那利群岛度假时买过假表。 我为什么告诉你们这些? 我们其实都买过假货, 或者我们知道有人买过假货, 直到此时此刻你也许 没再想起过这回事, 我也一样, 直到我回应了一个20个字 的神秘招聘广告, 成为了一个知识产权调查员。 广告里说”提供完整培训 和一些国际旅行机会“。 在一周之内,我就编了 我众多假名字中的第一个假名, 在那之后的十年里, 我调查过假冒汽车配件, 假冒合金轮毂, 假冒宠物清洁工具, 假冒自行车配件, 当然,还有造假者的最爱, 假冒的奢侈皮革制品,衣服和鞋子。
And what I've learned in the 10 years of investigating fakes is that once you start to scratch the surface, you find that they are rotten to the core, as are the people and organizations that are making money from them, because they are profiting on a massive, massive scale. You can only make around a hundred to 200 percent selling drugs on the street. You can make 2,000 percent selling fakes online with little of the same risks or penalties. And this quick, easy money then goes on to fund the more serious types of crime, and it pays the way to making these organizations, these criminal organizations, look more legitimate.
我在这十年调查假货 的经验里学到的是, 一旦你开始撕破表面那一层, 你就会发现售假牟利 的这些人和组织,其内部已经腐烂了, 因为这个行当的利润惊人。 在街上卖毒品, 你只能挣到1倍到2倍的利润。 在网上卖假货,你能挣到20倍的利润, 相比卖毒品风险或惩罚小得多。 这种快而容易的钱 开始去资助很多真正的犯罪, 而且这种钱使得这些犯罪组织 看起来更合法。
So let me bring you in on a live case. Earlier this year, a series of raids took place in one of my longest-running investigations. Five warehouses were raided in Turkey, and over two million finished counterfeit clothing products were seized, and it took 16 trucks to take that all away. But this gang had been clever. They had gone to the lengths of creating their own fashion brands, complete with registered trademarks, and even having photo shoots on yachts in Italy. And they would use these completely unheard-of and unsuspicious brand names as a way of shipping container loads of fakes to shell companies that they'd set up across Europe. And documents found during those raids found that they'd been falsifying shipping documents so the customs officials would literally have no idea who had sent the products in the first place. When police got access to just one bank account, they found nearly three million euros had been laundered out of Spain in less than two years, and just two days after those raids, that gang were trying to bribe a law firm to get their stock back. Even now, we have no idea where all that money went, to who it went to, but you can bet it's never going to benefit the likes of you or me.
让我给你们讲一个真实的案例。 今年早些时候,在我所 参与的时间最长的一次调查中, 进行了一系列的突袭行动。 在土耳其有5间仓库被扫荡了, 有超过2百万的假冒成品服装制被查封, 当时用了16辆卡车来运走它们。 但是这次的犯罪组织很聪明, 他们费尽心机创造了 他们自己的服装品牌, 完成了商标注册, 甚至还在意大利的游艇上拍好了照片。 他们想利用这些 完全没听过的可疑品牌 来运输装满假货的集装箱, 运到他们在欧洲建立的空壳公司。 这些突袭行动中发现的文件 显示他们已经伪造好了船务文件, 这样海关关员从这些文件上是找不到 到底是谁从一开始发出了这些货物。 警察只是查询了一个银行户口, 就发现了差不多3百万欧元的款项 在不到两年的时间内 就从西班牙被洗出去。 这些突袭行动结束仅仅两天之后, 涉事的犯罪组织试着去贿赂 一家律师行,把他们的货物弄回来。 即使现在,我们也不知道 那些钱都去了哪, 汇到了谁那里, 但是你肯定知道这些钱 是不会惠及比如你和我这样的人的。
But these aren't just low-level street thugs. They're business professionals, and they fly first class. They trick legitimate businesses with convincing fake invoices and paperwork, so everything just seems real, and then they set up eBay and Amazon accounts just to compete with the people they've already sold fakes to.
这些可不是街头低段位的混混。 他们是专业的商务人士, 都是坐头等舱的人物, 他们利用假发票和文件 使自己看起来像在做合法生意, 所有的事看起来都和真的一样, 他们还建立了Ebay和亚马逊账户 来和那些已经买了他们货的人竞争。
But this isn't just happening online. For a few years, I also used to attend automotive trade shows taking place in huge exhibition spaces, but away from the Ferraris and the Bentleys and the flashing lights, there'd be companies selling fakes: companies with a brochure on the counter and another one underneath, if you ask them the right questions. And they would sell me fake car parts, faulty fake car parts that have been estimated to cause over 36,000 fatalities, deaths on our roads each year.
这些事可不是只发生在网络上。 几年前,我经常参加一些 在巨大展览场地 举行的汽车展, 在远离法拉利,宾利和闪光灯的地方 也有公司在售卖假货。 在展台上放着一本目录册的公司, 如果你问他们正确的问题, 那么私底下他们还有另外一家公司。 他们会卖给我假冒的 有问题的汽车配件, 而这种配件据估计已经造成了 每年道路上超过36000起死伤。
Counterfeiting is set to become a 2.3-trillion-dollar underground economy, and the damage that can be done with that kind of money, it's really frightening ... because fakes fund terror. Fake trainers on the streets of Paris, fake cigarettes in West Africa, and pirate music CDs in the USA have all gone on to fund trips to training camps, bought weapons and ammunition, or the ingredients for explosives. In June 2014, the French security services stopped monitoring the communications of Said and Cherif Kouachi, the two brothers who had been on a terror watch list for three years. But that summer, they were only picking up that Cherif was buying fake trainers from China, so it signaled a shift away from extremism into what was considered a low-level petty crime. The threat had gone away. Seven months later, the two brothers walked into the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine and killed 12 people, wounded 11 more, with guns from the proceeds of those fakes. So whatever you think, this isn't a faraway problem happening in China. It's happening right here.
假货是一种已达2.3万亿美元 规模的地下经济, 这么大规模的钱能造成的伤害 是非常可怕的。 因为假货在资助恐怖主义。 巴黎街上的假冒运动鞋, 西非的假冒烟草, 美国的盗版音乐CD, 所有这些都在资助 去恐怖训练营的旅程, 所有这些都被用来购买武器, 弹药或者爆炸材料。 2014年6月,法国安全部门 停止了监视塞得和谢里夫·酷阿奇的通讯, 而这两兄弟在3年里 都在恐怖主义的监视名单上。 但在那个夏天,他们只知道谢里夫 正从中国购买假运动鞋, 所以这显示了他们偏离了恐怖主义, 转到了一种被认为是低层次类型的犯罪。 威胁已经消除了。 七个月之后, 这两兄弟走进了沙尔利周刊的办公室, 杀死了12个人,超过11个人受伤, 而他们用的枪就是卖假货得来的。 所以不管你怎么想,这不是 一个发生在中国的遥远问题, 它就发生在这儿。
And Paris is not unique. Ten years earlier, in 2004, 191 people lost their lives when a Madrid commuter train was bombed. The attack had been partly funded by the sale of pirate music CDs in the US. Two years prior to that, an Al Qaeda training manual recommended explicitly selling fakes as a good way of supporting terror cells.
巴黎并不是特例。 十年前的2004年, 在马德里通勤列车爆炸案中, 191个人遇难。 那场袭击部分资金来源于 美国盗版音乐CD的销售。 而在这场袭击发生的两年前, 一份基地组织的训练手册 明确建议将售卖假货作为 支持恐怖主义的一种很好方式。
But despite this, despite the evidence connecting terrorism and counterfeiting, we do go on buying them, increasing the demand to the point where there's even a store in Turkey called "I Love Genuine Fakes." And you have tourists posing with photographs on TripAdvisor, giving it five-star reviews. But would those same tourists have gone into a store called "I Love Genuine Fake Viagra Pills" or "I Genuinely Love Funding Terrorism"? I doubt it.
但是先不管这些, 不管恐怖主义和售假之间的证据, 我们确实去买过假货, 增加了对假货的需求, 甚至在土耳其有这么一家店 名字叫“ 我爱货真价实的假货”。 而且有些游客在 猫途鹰网站上贴出了照片, 还给了这家店五星评价。 但是这些游客会不会走进一家店, 名字叫“我爱真的假伟哥”, 或者名字叫“我真的爱资助恐怖主义” ? 我不相信。
Many of us think that we're completely helpless against organized crime and terrorism, that we can do nothing about the next attack, but I believe you can. You can by becoming investigators, too. The way we cripple these networks is to cut their funding, and that means cutting the demand and changing this idea that it's a victimless crime. Let's all identify counterfeiters, and don't give them our money.
我们之中许多人认为, 在面对有组织犯罪和恐怖主义时, 我们完全无能为力, 对于下一次袭击,我们做不了什么, 但是我相信你们可以。 你们也能作为调查员来做点什么。 我们摧毁这些网络的方式 是切断他们的资金来源, 而那意味着切断他们的需求, 意味着改变这个观念: 假货只是一种没有受害者的犯罪。 让我们都来找出售假者, 不要给他们我们的钱。
So here's a few tips from one investigator to another to get you started. Number one: here's a typical online counterfeiter's website. Note the URL. If you're shopping for sunglasses or camera lenses, say, and you come across a website like medical-insurance-bankruptcy.com, start to get very suspicious.
以下是一个调查员 帮助你们开始的几个提示。 第一条: 这是一个典型的网上售假者的网站。 注意网址。 比如如果你想买太阳镜或者相机镜头, 而你来到一个网址像这样的网站, 那么你要开始非常怀疑了。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Counterfeiters register expired domain names as a way of keeping up the old website's Google page ranking.
售假者注册了一些过期的域名, 以保持这些网站的Google排名。
Number two: is the website screaming at you that everything is 100 percent genuine, but still giving you 75 percent off the latest collection? Look for words like "master copy," "overruns," "straight from the factory." They could write this all in Comic Sans, it's that much of a joke.
第二条: 是不是有网站大声告诉你 这里的东西都是100%真货, 但即便是最新款也给你二五折? 找找这样的字眼,比如“原厂出品”, “库存处理”,“工厂直销”。 这些字眼可能都是用 Comic Sans字体写的,就是一个笑话。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Number three: if you get as far as the checkout page, and you don't see "https" or a padlock symbol next to the URL, you should really start thinking about closing the tab, because these indicate active security measures that will keep your personal and credit card information safe.
第三条: 如果你都来到了结帐页面, 而你没看到“https"字样 或者在网址边有个锁的图标, 那么你真的要开始考虑关掉这个页面, 因为这些东西提示了 保证你个人信息和 信用卡信息安全的措施。
OK, last one: go hunting for the "Contact Us" page. If you can only find a generic webform, no company name, telephone number, email address, postal address -- that's it, case closed. You found a counterfeiter. Sadly, you're going to have to go back to Google and start your shopping search all over again, but you didn't get ripped off, so that's only a good thing.
好,最后一条: 去看看”联系我们“这个页面。 如果你只是发现了 一个一般的网页表格, 没有公司名字,没有电话号码, 邮箱,邮政地址—— 那么,结案了。 你找到了一个售假者。 遗憾的是,你要回到Google, 重新开始你的购物搜索, 不过你没被坑钱,那是唯一的好事。
As the world's most famous fictional detective would say, "Watson, the game is afoot." Only this time, my investigator friends, the game is painfully real.
就像世界最著名的虚构侦探说的那样, ”华生,这个游戏永不会停止。“ 就在此刻,我的调查员朋友们 还在进行着这个痛苦的游戏。
So the next time you're shopping online, or perhaps wherever it is, look closer, question a little bit deeper, and ask yourself -- before you hand over the cash or click "Buy," "Am I sure this is real?" Tell your friend that used to buy counterfeit watches that he may just have brought the next attack one day closer. And, if you see an Instagram advert for fakes, don't keep scrolling past, report it to the platform as a scam.
所以下一次你在网上购物时, 或者在其他什么地方购物, 看仔细,多质疑,在你交钱 或者点击购买按钮时, 问问你自己, ”我能确定这是真的吗?“ 告诉你习惯买假表的朋友, 也许他使下一次恐怖袭击更近了一天。 当你在Instagram上看到假货的广告时, 不要只是翻过去, 要去向平台报告。
Let's shine a light on the dark forces of counterfeiting that are hiding in plain sight. So please, spread the word and don't stop investigating.
让我们给藏在不起眼角落里的 这些假货的黑暗力量打上一束光。 所以,请传达给全世界, 请不要停止调查。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)