One Tuesday morning last April, a blonde woman from Sweden stood out from the crowd, leading nine Kenyan officers to a storefront she believed was selling counterfeit goods. But they weren’t after knock-off handbags, watches or sunglasses. The shop specialized in a far less sexy -- and ultimately more dangerous -- fake product: ball bearings.

Overseeing the raid was Tina Aastroem, head of brand protection for SKF AB, a Swedish maker of bearings. Aastroem had cased the store six months earlier, concluding that many SKF products there, as well as those of rival manufacturers FAG and Timken Co., were fake. In the raid, her team spent hours sorting through boxes stacked from floor to ceiling--fueled by chicken ordered from the local KFC--and found $100,000 of counterfeit bearings for cars and other vehicles.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-13/forget-sham-rolexes-the-real-money-is-in-fake-ball-bearings