An employee of a Saluda Street business faces seven charges after police say they seized some $500,000 worth of counterfeit items from the store where the Rock Hill man worked.
Police arrested 33-year-old Ali Sillah late Thursday night at his workplace, BAK Fashions at 1424 Saluda St., said Rock Hill police Lt. Jerry Waldrop.
Sillah, of 1781 Cedar Post Lane, was charged with two counts of trafficking counterfeit goods, three counts of criminal conspiracy, one count of illegally selling video recordings and one count of illegally selling audio recordings.
Police did not charge the owner of the store, Ba Kaira, who was arrested in 2000 after officers raided the business and took more than $150,000 worth of items they said were counterfeit.
When asked why Sillah was charged and not Kaira, Waldrop declined to comment. However, he did say police are still investigating to determine if anyone else will be charged.
Thousands of items seized
The charges came after police seized thousands of items from the store during Thursday's raid. On Friday, Waldrop said those items included 1,292 pairs of shoes, 756 articles of clothing, 115 hats, 11,710 CDs and 2,811 DVDs. He said most of the shoes were Nike counterfeits and some of the clothes were faux Lacoste. All of the items were imported, he said, but investigators are still trying to figure out where they came from.
Police started investigating the business several months ago when they received information that the store was selling counterfeit items again. After an undercover operative associated with the music industry made a purchase on Wednesday, police raided the store Thursday morning. Waldrop said the roughly half-million dollars worth of goods might be the largest seizure of counterfeit items in the city's history.
After his arrest in 2000, Kaira was convicted of three charges, including illegal distribution of recordings and unauthorized use of goods with a counterfeit trademark, according to State Law Enforcement Division records. In each case, he was sentenced to a year in prison that was suspended to a year of probation. He also was ordered to make restitution.
However, on April 7, Kaira was pardoned on all three charges.
Unlike his boss, Sillah has no criminal history in South Carolina, according to SLED records.
But if he's convicted, police say he could face several years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
Waldrop said a conviction for trafficking counterfeit goods carries up to 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine.
He said the illegal video and audio sales charges each carry a maximum $250,000 fine and 10 years in prison.
A conviction on a criminal conspiracy charge carries up to five years in prison and a fine is at the judge's discretion.
Sillah was being held at the Rock Hill jail Friday night.
He was scheduled to have a bond hearing this morning.
