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24 years old Kodak news... weird fakery

AgX

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Read here:

http://www.iconpublications.com/photon/march95/counterfeit.html

They spent an additional 30,000Pounds, what seemingly means 1Pound per raw cassette and cardboard box.


Do not overlook that hint at the Kodak undercover agent.



I first thought that article was published in the April-issue of that magazine, but it was the March-issue.
 
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I love how they were sloppy enough to mess up the ISO rating and not correct it. From the article:

If they had labelled it Gold 100, few would ever have noticed the fraud.
Click to expand...

How can you overlook that?
 
They could have got away with it, if the Konica film was only a year out of date it would likely have produced fine results. Konica centuria did, however, look different to Kodak Gold so some consumers might have noticed but not necessarily complained. I wonder what was in the rebate area of bulk cans of Konica Centuria?
 
There were many instances of counterfeiting attempted. However, most if not all were quickly detected and halted. With employees and the cooperation of dealers, photofinishers, and loyal customers infractions were reported and aggressively pursued by Kodak. Kodak was tireless in pursuing counterfeiting, patent infraction, warranty defense, and unreasonable product liability claims. I saw some lame attempts at fraud.

http://www.makingKODAKfilm.com
 
I’ll bet!
 
AgX, intereresting. I take it that both the offences and convictions were all within a few years of each other in the 1990s or were the convictions recent?. If they were then I can understand how Photon learned of it but if offences and convictions were all in the 1900s I wonder how Photon discovered the case? The content in the article leaves a number of questions and gives no answers such as what did they have the Spanish cassette making machinery print, if anything on the cassettes. Was it Konica and then they discovered that China could match their prices but if that then having Konica printed and boxed on a Kodak box would tend to give the game away So were they able to print Kodak Gold II instead and might have got away with the fraud but selling Kodak alerted Kodak and it was the Kodak undercover agent, if there was one, who alerted The U.K. Trading Standards who made the arrests?

More questions than answers given in the article

Thanks

pentaxuser
 
The article is from March 1995, likely short after the convictions were applied. "The offences were committed between October 1992 and August 1993."
From offending in August 1993 via detecting the suspects, via state prosecutor accusations over to a trial and a conviction in February 1995 does not seem that long to me.
 
Thanks AgX. No, it's not long and I thought this had to be the case but it was only in the link title that a date was given so it was worth asking as I wasn't sure that the date referred to the conviction date. The content of the article leaves "a little to be desired" as the U.K. expression goes in that it seems to raise questions that are not answered.

pentaxuser
 
AgX said:
They spent an additional 30,000Pounds, what seemingly means 1Pound per raw cassette and cardboard box.
Click to expand...

They bought the machine that spools and packages film. (quite likely also putting on frame numbers) so that would have been a capital investment if they were planning to just buy pancakes of film and sell it under a random label. for a one off caper, the cost of the machine is high.
 
Depends what spanish machine they were referring too. Likely the AP machine, which is rather small, only half-automatic and quite cheap.

The film likely already was signed, and someone who faked that badly, likely did not bother with signing at all.
 
perkeleellinen said:
A quick google seems to show two of the chaps now run a roofing business in Preston.
Click to expand...
I have not made a study of trends in sentencing but if it was their first offence the sentences were severe by present day standards - at least in the England

pentaxuser
 
Well, GAF once changed over from photographic film to roof shingles...
 
I never put two and two together - didn't know it was the same GAF
 
Sometimes life is quite simple.
However, you never know when...
 
I sent this thread to a couple friends for a laugh. We have a startup together and we were in the process of making the boxes for our products, so we were kinda wondering how it is possible to make a gross error like that. The design of our boxes took a couple months, we had at least 5 drafts and a couple mockups and numerous review cycles between at least four people.
When we received the order a couple days ago, we discovered that on the side of the box there was the wrong product name. In 600 boxes!
I guess I'm shamefully not laughing anymore...
 
You are honest to say that you have been wrong and failed yourself. Not everybody would do so.
 
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