In boxes stored at a secret location in Le Havre, nearly 38,000 pairs of counterfeit trainers that arrived from China in 2011 had been awaiting their fate. Because behind these shoes lies one of the longest legal proceedings customs officers have ever had to handle.
After fifteen years of legal wrangling, the French importer was finally sentenced in December 2025 to a customs fine of 1.56 million euros, 260,000 euros for customs-related money laundering, as well as three years in prison, two of them suspended.
