Charles Liu, “Uh-oh” is probably the last thing you want to hear regarding condoms. But that was a possibility had police in Italy not discovered a huge shipment of counterfeit goods from China that included 600,000 fake Durex “Big Boss” condoms.
Italian custom agents made the seizure at the da Vinci Airport in Rome, arresting 20 suspects, most of whom are Chinese nationals.
The authorities were effusive in their praise of the fake rubbers, calling them “perfect facsimiles of the international brand“. The fake condoms were said to contain packaging and instructional manuals that even had the Durex logo stamped on them.
But a fake is still a fake. Authorities said the counterfeit condoms contained flaws that made them unsafe for consumer use. They were made with poisonous chemical compounds and improper materials that weren’t properly sterilized.
The condoms were being held at a warehouse on the Balkan Peninsula in Albania before having been transported to Rome. They were part of a larger shipment of other counterfeit goods made in China that also included 150,000 pieces of imitation jewelry, and 500,000 fake health supplements.
This is, pardon the pun, just the tip of the problem, however. Underground Chinese factories are flooding the market with hundreds of millions of counterfeit condoms every year. Recently, Shanghai police arrested nine suspects when they cracked an underground manufacturing ring that had been selling 300,000 of fake condoms in eight Chinese provinces.
Fake condoms are dangerous to human health as they make it easier to transmit sexual diseases, and are reported to increase the chance of male infertility.
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