Two Americans, including a member of a wealthy New York City family, have been arrested in China, where the authorities said an investigation into their business activities had led to the seizure of more than 210,000 counterfeit motion picture DVDs and nearly $100,000 in cash.
Randolph Hobson Guthrie III, 37, and Cody Abram Thrush, 34, were among six people taken into custody on July 1 through a collaborative effort of Chinese and US investigators.
Under Chinese law, a suspect can be held for 30 days without a formal arrest, which in this case was announced on Thursday.
All six defendants will stand trial in China, officials said.
"The lure of high profit and a perceived lack of enforcement consequences has increasingly emboldened counterfeiters," said a statement by Michael Garcia, an assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
"This joint enforcement action shows a major advance in fighting intellectual property crime around the world, from where it originates to where it flourishes," he said.
The arrests grew out of an effort called Operation Spring that began with federal authorities in Gulfport, Mississippi, and grew to include officials in Houston, Washington, Beijing and Shanghai.
In addition to the seizures, US officials said Chinese authorities destroyed three warehouses that were used to store counterfeit DVDs for distribution around the world.
The state-run Xinhua news agency said the director of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, told reporters in Shanghai that the Americans had sold 100,000 of the DVDs worldwide.
US officials said they knew little about the Americans arrested in the case. But Guthrie, the son of a retired doctor, described himself in great length in a profile on a Web site for men seeking brides from Russia. As a resident of Shanghai who speaks English and Chinese, he said he owned a Web site that sold DVDs online.
"My gross sales are currently about US$25,000 per month, and I have 10 full-time employees," he wrote.
He said he sold the DVDs world-wide in a business he described as "very profitable." He also said that his family owned a bank, Bessemer Trust, a privately held financial management firm based in New York. But Richard Davis, the company's general counsel, said no one named Guthrie had a controlling interest of the company.
US authorities said they had no information about Thrush.
The theft of intellectual property has been a major problem for American filmmakers, costing the industry about US$3.5 billion a year in lost revenues worldwide. Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, estimated that the ring had cost US filmmakers US$180 million in lost revenues.
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
‘REMARKABLE SHOWING’: The economy likely grew 5 percent in the first half of the year, although it would likely taper off significantly, TIER economist Gordon Sun said The Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) yesterday raised Taiwan’s GDP growth forecast for this year to 3.02 percent, citing robust export-driven expansion in the first half that is likely to give way to a notable slowdown later in the year as the front-loading of global shipments fades. The revised projection marks an upward adjustment of 0.11 percentage points from April’s estimate, driven by a surge in exports and corporate inventory buildup ahead of possible US tariff hikes, TIER economist Gordon Sun (孫明德) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy likely grew more than 5 percent in the first six months
RSS