Market trader pays the price for selling fake designer clothing

Moosia Ghaffar, 51, of Richmond Street, London, was handed a community sentence of 200 hours of unpaid work and ordered to pay costs of £500 having admitted 13 charges relating to more than 200 items of counterfeit clothing at an earlier hearing.

It follows an anti-counterfeiting operation at Bovingdon Market by Hertfordshire Trading Standards over an extended period of time. A council spokesman said that having made a test purchase and confirmed it as fake, Ghaffar was arrested and clothing and cash were seized.

In sentencing, St Albans magistrates considered aggravating factors including a previous conviction for possessing counterfeit goods and that, in this case, there were numerous offences over a period of time.

The Magistrates were satisfied that the cash seized was part of the trading operation and forfeited 665 items in total which related to all of the clothing seized.

Richard Thake, cabinet member for Community Safety, said clamping down on illegal traders like Ghaffar could help the fight against serious organised crime.

He said: “Hertfordshire Trading Standards will continue to fight against intellectual property crime.

“The sale of counterfeit goods damages honest businesses who suffer when sales are lost to criminals who peddle these illegal goods. Also, in some cases, the profits are used to fund more serious organised crime.”