There is no end to the effort of criminals to bypass the duties placed on imported goods. If the duties can be avoided then the buyer of the goods can make a much larger profit of course. When you think of illegally imported items it is usually clothes and DVDs that come to mind. But in one recent case in the United States, it was all about hangars.

If you are like most people, you dont really think about the hangers holding your pressed embroidered shirts that you wear to work. But hangers are big business.

An Alabama hanger manufacturer in the U.S.A. reported an international conspiracy that involved bringing in cheap China-made hangers without paying import duties. The Alabama company has suffered financially as a result of the illegal imports and decided to report it to government officials.

This is the way it worked. The hangers were manufactured in China and shipped to the U.S. first as destined for Mexico. Then they were transported to Mexico and labelled as Made in Mexico. The newly stamped hangers then were shipped back to the United States for resale and bypassed the higher duties on Chinese made hangers. This was a multi-million dollar operation that led to the dumping of hangers on the market at lower prices.

Two men charged with the illegal business are in California and have been arrested. They were caught by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office which secretly marked a shipment that arrived in the U.S.A. and was headed to Mexico. The secret ultraviolet markings then showed up a couple of weeks later when the boxes arrived back in the U.S.A., but now the hangers were marked as Made in Mexico.

This is certainly not the only case either. Illegal hangers are shipped from Vietnam, Korea, Malaysia and many other places. And the U.S.A. is certainly not the only country dealing with illegal imports. In the U.K., knock-off products are increasingly showing up. It just goes to show that when you hang up your work uniforms, you really dont know where that hanger came from. It just might be an illegal product unbeknownst to you.

(c)

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