A group falls that falsified 3.5 million batteries to take advantage of the demand for the blackout | Spain

A group of counterfeiters saw in the blackout last April 28, when the citizens recalled the convenience of having a flashlight or a battery radius in case the electricity supply fails, an opportunity to make the box with the high demand for batteries. The batteries ended in many shops, and the main manufacturing companies should have received great orders to replace them, but the accounts did not leave. The knowledge of how these criminal groups work, which seek to make the maximum benefit, together with the fact that batteries had not warned any increase in sales, began an investigation in which the National Police has intervened 3.5 million counterfeit batteries, prepared in pallets for distribution and the machinery that was used to put the labels and containers of the best known brands.

A group of research, with agents specialized at foreigners and industrial and intellectual property, arrested six people, five men and one woman, who worked and lived in an industrial ship in Toledo where these batteries were falsified. Those arrested, of Asian origin, were released after being made available for crimes against industrial property, against the market and consumers and violation of the foreigner law. The police have intervened the battery cargo, whose value has not yet been estimated, and that now guard the brands they supplanted. The counterfeit batteries, which did not mix in the market, occupied seven trucks, as two of the operational controls have detailed this Friday at a press conference at the Superior Police Headquarters of Madrid.

For a consumer it is quite difficult to differentiate authentic batteries from those counterfeit by the level of improvement that these falsifications have. However, there are certain details, such as the ease with which the package plastic opens, or if the nail is passing through the part of the poles of the battery, the plastic closure follows because it is not well sealed, which may be indications that it is not a product that meets the guarantees offered by the marks. Among the main risks it entails for the population that these batteries are marketed are the possibility of explosion or that cause short circuits in the devices where they are used for their poor finish. When it is not well sealed and does not work well, it produces corrosion: “If a child takes it and puts it in the mouth, sucks or comes into contact with the skin, it can be abrasive or if it swallows it, I do not want to imagine it or imagine,” explained José Luis Gómez, head of the Industrial Property Section of the National Police.

During the appearance, in which the head of the Madrid Brigade of Aliens and Borders, Víctor de las Heras, also intervened, and while they showed the intervened batteries, part of the batteries have left a trace of chemicals at the table where they were exposed. Upon taking them, the agents have realized that some detached heat.

Although in these cases, specialized agents try to reach the top of criminal organizations, they were arrested at the beginning of June because they suspected them were going to distribute them. “The risk that this type of products have is when they are able to introduce into the normal distribution chain,” Gomez added, something that has not been produced. The detainees had 75 pallets prepared between batteries and some tobacco products that also falsified, as paper for cigarettes.

Those 3.5 million batteries constitute the greatest apprehension that has been made in the last 10 years, according to police sources. Never before had four chains of simultaneous production be intervened for the different phases in which they turned simple silver batteries into batteries of the best known brands, they have added.

The investigated group acquired the batteries through different countries of the European Union and brought them to Spain. According to police investigations, they were in charge of placing the route with industrial machines (the plastic wrapping with the brand) and in other assembly chains they were assembled in the packages by joining a plastic part and the cardboard that replied the packaging of the brands. The investigation continues to determine in which EU countries the batteries were produced with the aim of reaching those responsible.

The group had settled in three industrial ships in Toledo (two in the municipality of Yuncler and one in Casarrubuelos) and officially had a distribution business. In order not to be discovered and prevent the noise of the machinery to alert the neighbors, they had built a watertight room with which, in addition to cushioning the sound, they remained hidden. They had the capacity to prepare 30,000 units of batteries a day, according to the investigation.

Illegal copies generate losses of almost 6,000 million euros a year in Spain, according to the SICPA research agency.