Mexican authorities conducted raids against 12 alleged distributors of counterfeit Nintendo products in a major "fayuca" (contraband) market in Guadalajara, confiscating 15,000 imitation products, including 4,500 counterfeit Wii game discs.
The Guadalajara raids follow other Nintendo actions in Mexico during the past few months. Last month, Nintendo worked with customs agents to stop a shipment of more than 5,500 counterfeit Nintendo products entering Manzanillo, exported from China. Prior to that, Nintendo assisted local authorities in a raid of the San Juan de Dios market in Guadalajara, where 23 stores were shut down and more than 56,000 counterfeit Nintendo products were confiscated, including 11,000 counterfeit Wii discs.
"Mexico is Nintendo's largest market in Latin America, where the problem of video game piracy is widespread," said Jodi Daugherty, Nintendo of America's senior director of anti-piracy. "Since January, Nintendo has worked with law enforcement agencies worldwide to seize 100,000 counterfeit Wii games."
Earlier this month, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents executed 32 federal search warrants in 16 states as part of an investigation into the alleged sale and distribution of illegal Wii modification chips designed to circumvent the security embedded in the hardware and allow users to play counterfeit Wii software.
Nintendo and its developers and publishers lost an estimated $762 million in sales in 2006 due to piracy of its products.
