TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A 35 year old Taiwanese man has been arrested for selling counterfeit Amiibo collectable game cards that are compatible with Nintendo Switch video games, and sold with collectible character figurines.
The man, surnamed Wu (吳), was selling the counterfeit cards for NT$16 or N$17 each. When confronted by police he was discovered to have over 6,000 of the counterfeit Amiibo cards depicting different video-game characters, like Link from the Legend of Zelda, and the Super Mario Bros.
Amiibo collectible cards, sold by the Nintendo company, are compatible with the Switch video game system and other platforms using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. The cards are each equipped with a senor recognized by the video game system.
The 6,850 Amiibo cards printed by Wu had complete NFC functionality, making them nearly indistinguishable from the genuine article at first glance. The sheer number of cards Wu possessed, which are generally only packaged with toy figurines, was a clear give away that the merchandise had been counterfeited.
According to Liberty Times, Wu had obtained the large stock of counterfeit Nintendo cards from China. A team from the Criminal Investigation Bureau tasked with hunting down intellectual property and copyright violations, discovered Wu’s operation via an online market place.
The estimated market value of the confiscated counterfeit property is about NT$3 million (US$97,000).
According to Nintendo Wire, duplication of NFC technology is “notoriously easy to perform,” and authorities can likely expect to see similar forgery operations in the future.
