Tay Swee Seng, 54, and his wife Wang Mingdan, 44, along with their daughter Wang Jiawen and son-in-law Zhong Xiangrong pleaded guilty on Monday (August 17) to selling fake branded goods at Far East Plaza and marking up the prices by up to 300%.
Tay and his wife operated the three shops in Far East Plaza and have been in the business for more than a decade.
Tay and Wang started out selling women’s fashion under the business Cristelle Fashion at Orchard Central.
Wang admitted to buying the fake branded goods in bulkl from a wholesale centre in Guangzhou China whenever she returned to her hometown a few times a year.
Each item cost about SGD$3.95, which they would then mark up the price by 300%.
The average sales of their Cristelle Fashion shops was about $11,000 to $15,000 per month, with profits of about $3,000 monthly.
Wang also ordered good for her son-in-law to sell at his shop called Muses.
On November 2018, one of Wang’s shops was raided by police who seized the fake Chanel goods, which Tay then paid a compensation of S$10,000 to Chanel in an out-of-court settlement.
However, they continued to sell fake goods using Chanel’s name.
In July 7 last year, the Intellectual Property Rights Branch raided three of Wang’s stores and found 110 fake products such as clothing, bags, jewellery which were purportedly from Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga and etcetera.
Another raid at Muses also uncovered 62 of such fake items.
On Monday, Wang pleaded guilty to eight offences under the Trade Marks Act with husband Tay also admitting to intentionally aiding his wife in the same eight offences.
Another 17 charges were taken into consideration.
Their lawyer argued that the goods they sold were of low value and that it was a genuine one, although it was mixed with “infringing articles”, he asked the court for fines for his clients.
The prosecutor then responded, sayind that the goods had been sold at marked up prices, diverting the sales away from the rightful trademark holders.
The family of four will return to the court on August 31 for their sentencing.
For each count of having fake branded goods in their possession for sale, the accused can be jailed for up to five years, fined up to S$10,000 per item at a cap of S$100,000, or both.