Wearing The Real Thing Won't Land You In Jail
Once upon a time, Elfren Meneses Jr. was the Regional Director of the NBI’s Anti-Fraud and Computer Crimes Division (circa 2006). Back then, he was responsible for doing raids on illegal businesses, such as doing a raid on an online casino operation that was fronting as an Internet cafe. He was also once responsible for tracking down Philippine-based spammers in the Internet. Elfren Meneses Jr. also hounded down a criminal syndicate that was involved in a multi-million land scam that victimized a number of businessmen. Apparently, this syndicate sold property in the provinces to a lot of businessmen, but failed to turn over the property, and it was Elfren Meneses Jr. who spearheded the investigation when the accused suspects were still at large.
Today, Elfren Meneses Jr. is the chief of the NBI-IPRD, which is better known as the National Bureau of Investigation – Intellectual Property Rights Division. His name has been in the papers the past few days, but not in the big headlines. Elfren Meneses Jr. has been coming up in little short paragraphs in the Metro section for conducting several raids on shops that have been selling fake branded material.
Recently, Elfren Meneses Jr. raided St. Francis Square and seized around 5 Million Pesos worth of fake Lacoste products, acting on a complaint by the local Lacoste brand carrying the original apparel. Now, whether or not the estimated 5 Million Pesos worth of illegal Lacoste products is based on the actual selling price of the tiangge in St. Francis Square, or the actual worth of the original product, I haven’t had the chance to investigae. May tawad na ba iyan?
Apart from that, another recent bust includes the raid on fake BMW Shirts in the Greenhills Shopping Center and the seizure of fake Bulgari jewelry in a jewelry mall place in Ongpin Street in Santa Cruz, Manila. The total worth of goods seized is estimated at 2 Million Pesos, more or less. Siyempre, baka may tawad pa.
Apparently, the fake Bulgari jewelry was made of real gold, however, the fake branding of Bulgari is a clear violation of the intellectual property rights, and thus led to the raid, the confiscation of products and the filing of criminal charges.
Prior to this, Elfren Meneses Jr. also raided a stall in Divisoria Mall that was selling fake Jiao Li and Device products – fake whitening creams and beauty products.
I don’t really want to go into the whole deal about why some people have to go into the business of selling fake branded products. Well, some people want to give the impression of their awesome sense of branded-ness despite fully knowing that they’re just buying a knock-off. Whatever. If there wasn’t a demand, then I guess there wouldn’t be that much out there. And since there’s a lot out there, then I guess Elfren Meneses Jr. will have his hands full going up against these intellectual property rights violators, and continue catching these criminals.
Anyway, what concerns me more about Elfren Meneses Jr. is that someone should get started writing an action movie about this crime-buster, who has made several raids on all sorts of illegal businesses. Add some gunfire, a few car chase scenes, a mafia boss played by a real cool super villain, a sexy woman as mistress or wife, plus a loosely “based on a true story” caption, and we’ve got the formula for a blockbuster.
Hmmm. If it reaches the DVD stalls in Metrowalk and Greenhills, Elfren Meneses Jr. could even raid them and confiscate them.
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