Business owner prosecuted over production and sale of counterfeit T-shirts

Derby City Council’s Trading Standards team has prosecuted a man for the sale of counterfeit printed t-shirts.

Juri Frolov appeared at Derby Crown Court on Wednesday (6 September) where he was sentenced to 14 months imprisonment, suspended for 18 months with 100 hours unpaid work. He had previously pleaded guilty to eight offences under the Trade Marks Act 1994, and two offences related to Section 329 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.-

The defendant had admitted the offences at Derby Magistrates Court on 28 June 2020. He left the court on unconditional bail and the case was deferred to Derby Crown Court.

Frolov had been printing and selling T-shirts of famous known brands without the consent of the trademark owners. The investigation discovered he had been selling the T-shirts for around four years leading up to December 2019, when a search warrant was carried out at his home in the Arboretum area of Derby City.

Trading Standards seized equipment including a T-shirt printer, a large amount of blank T-shirts, and customer returns. The shirts were advertised on eBay and printed to order from Frolov’s home address.

Previously, Frolov had received a letter from an anti-counterfeiting organisation requesting him to stop selling T-shirts which were produced without the consent of the trademark owner. He had failed to acknowledge the content of the letter and take appropriate action to stop producing and selling the T-shirts.

Councillor Baggy Shanker, Cabinet Member for Housing, Property and Regulatory Services, said: “We take any illegal business activity very seriously and I’m pleased that we’ve finally been able to secure a prosecution in this case. I’d like to thank our Trading Standards team for their continued hard work in successfully finding and prosecuting illegal traders in our city.”