U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has seized
132 domain names in a Cyber Monday crackdown on online sales of pirated goods.
The sites were selling a host of counterfeit goods, including
videos. It was the third year that ICE has timed the seizures with Cyber
Monday, the online version of Black Friday.
The sites included a number of top-level foreign domains
including .uk and .eu.
Leads provided by trademark holders were investigated by
field offices in Baltimore; Buffalo; Denver; El Paso; Newark; San Antonio; San
Diego and Ventura, Calif., as well as Europol member countries including
Belgium, Denmark, France and the UK. Europol joined the U.S.-led National
Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center) earlier this
year.
The crackdown extended to Paypal accounts used by the
offending sites.
