Italian police have tracked and shut down an illegal video game trafficking ring that was buying and selling fake retro game consoles loaded with ROMs. All the products have been destroyed as part of the bust, and those involved face serious jail time.
As reported by the BBC, a video game trafficking ring with fake vintage consoles and games worth $55.5m has been busted by Italian police. Nine Italian nationals have been arrested in the sting and charged with trading in counterfeited goods. If they’re found guilty, each member of the illegal outfit faces up to eight years in prison. Considering how popular retro games and consoles are and have been for a few years now, the punishment here seems to absolutely fit the crime.
That’s no N64
The illegal group was found with a staggering 12,000 consoles holding a mind-blowing 47 million games. Collectively, the stock was valued at roughly €47.5 million/$52.6 million. The head of the economic crime unit for Turin’s financial police, Alessandro Langella, explained how all the consoles had been purchased and imported from China and then resold through third-party websites.
I don’t have details on exactly what the listings for these items looked like, but I can imagine that they were likely being advertised as real rather than fake. At the very least, they would have been advertised as a similar product with games pre-loaded. Those games were, of course, pirated copies, which are really quite illegal to sell in the first place.
However, based on the BBC’s article, it sounds like the reason the Italian police were able to shut down the ring seems to have been the consoles’ actual quality, not that they were fake. Since they were made in China, they’ve been manufactured to different standards than those upheld in the EU. Issues with them include their batteries and electrical circuits, which didn’t meet EU safety standards. This could cause a real danger if a console suddenly set on fire or melted while plugged in.
Unfortunately, it’s not surprising that this group took advantage of the demand for retro games and consoles. While not all retro consoles have increased in price over the past year or so, many like the Nintendo Game Boy and GameCube have.
Alessandro Langella lists TikTok’s #retrogaming as one of the main drivers for the increase in interest in retro gaming and consoles. With more than 170 million posts and multiple platforms like resale websites and social media to sell through, it’s so easy to set up a business selling fakes. However, with copies of Mario selling for over $100,000, it’s hard not to be tempted by what seems like a great deal when you see it online.
I still have my old consoles that are now considered retro and growing in value. It’s so easy to be taken in by a fake, though, since the designs can be easily copied and 3D printed. This news is a lesson to collectors and investors to be vigilant and be sure of what you’re about to buy, or you could fall victim to another scam ring.
While the people responsible very much deserve to be punished, I can’t help but feel like we’ve lost something with all those fake consoles being destroyed in the bust. I’d like to have seen a content creator dive into the manufacturing and see what’s on one of them, just so we have that information preserved for this wild story.
