The Chinese woman has a history of selling counterfeit luxury goods. She has been sued in the US by eight luxury brands. She owes Chanel Inc USD 6.9 million for selling products online under its name.
None of it has stopped Xu Ting, a 45-year-old immigrant, from achieving a comfortable suburban life in San Diego with her husband and their 3-year-old son. Last year, she became a legal resident.
China is not the only country with a counterfeiting problem. Most fakes are made in China, but they are sold in America, where counterfeiting is rarely prosecuted as a crime.
Lack of cooperation with China makes it easy for counterfeiters to move their money beyond reach -- and hard to root out counterfeiting kingpins. As long as counterfeiters can stay out of jail and hold on to their profits -- and consumers continue to buy -- the trade in fakes will thrive.
"There's a million ways to game the system," said Dan Plane, an intellectual property lawyer in Hong Kong. "Probably the only thing that's going to stop her is when she passes away -- probably on an island resort somewhere -- or if she gets arrested."
So far, Xu Ting has simply refused to show up in court. She has worked toward a graduate degree at San Diego State University, helped her family accumulate at least USD 890,000 in bank accounts in China, and bought a USD 585,000 house with her husband, public records and court cases show.
"The essential point for Chanel is really shutting down the counterfeiting operations which we did successfully," Chanel spokeswoman Kathrin Schurrer wrote in an email.
Schurrer added that the legal process is ongoing and declined further comment, but did note that "California has a law prohibiting the civil seizure of a home if it is a primary residence."
In 2009, a Florida judge ruled against Xu Ting and shut down seven websites selling fake Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs and Celine.
In 2010, Gucci and other brands in France's Kering group filed a lawsuit in New York federal court against Xu Ting, her future husband, and eight others who allegedly sold more than USD 2 million worth of fake handbags and wallets online to US customers.
Xu Ting's husband, Xu Lijun, has settled. A licensed civil engineer in California, he denied wrongdoing but agreed to let Gucci keep USD 400,000 in seized counterfeiting proceeds and pay a USD 7,500 fine.
His lawyer, Eric Siegle, said he was "a small-time nobody."
"The people they are arresting or suing here in the United States are low-level people," Siegle said. "If you can find where the money is going, you can get to the heart of the problem."
But Gucci couldn't find where the money went once it landed in China because Chinese banks refused to disclose account details.
