US Donates Thousands of Shoes to Charity


U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will donate 10,000 pairs of confiscated shoes to Samaritan’s Feet, a Charlotte, NC-based non-profit charity with the goal of providing shoes to 10 million impoverished people around the world in 10 years.
The shoes, confiscated as counterfeit goods, failed to display legitimate trademarks and would have been destroyed, had the government not struck the deal to donate them to charity.

"We are very pleased that the efforts of CBP and ICE officers and agents have not only stopped counterfeit goods from being distributed in the United States illegally, but have made it possible for the people served by Samaritan’s Feet to benefit," said W. Ralph Basham, Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in a press release.

According to U.S. Customs officials, footwear was the most often seized counterfeit item in 2007, with a domestic value of $77.7 million, or about 40 percent of the entire value of goods seized.

In March 2006, Congress passed and President Bush signed the Stop Counterfeiting In Manufactured Goods Act, intended to cut off the flow of counterfeit consumer goods into the United States.

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