CINCINNATI — Heading into the holidays, the Port of Cincinnati will process as many as 250,000 shipments a night from all over the world.
There are 25 U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents working each night to ensure what's coming into the country is legal.
Acting Chief Jeremy Clark said the teams use logistics to narrow down which packages can be pulled for further review to find drugs, guns and counterfeit items that will come in a flood through December as shoppers buy gifts online.
"We're here to find the proverbial needle in a haystack," Clark said.
Clark talked with WCPO surrounded by counterfeit items they'd pulled from the line on previous nights. The items around him were marked Louis Vuitton, Cartier and Hermes, and were quite convincing at a glance.
"Some of the differences you won't see with the naked eye, but when you touch, when you feel, you can feel the quality," he said.
Fake perfumes that would go at $100 at a department store sat on the table surrounded by whizzing belts moving packages around the facility. Golden necklaces in cheap packaging sat beside the bottles, and a fake Apple Watch and fake Motorola communications devices sat on the table nearby.
Customs officials said they seized $162,748,661 worth of counterfeit items from October 2023 to October 2024.
Clark warned the counterfeiting could do worse than lose consumers money as well.
He pointed to the Halloween contacts that have injured people's eyes on one table, and counterfeit Botox — a highly toxic material used in injections — beside them as examples.
Port Director Eric Zizelman showed WCPO a variety of drugs seized from a single shipment ranging from amoxicillin to Xanax-like drugs.
"All of this came in the same shipment," Zizelman said. "Something is amiss here, right?"
Clark said counterfeit watches can lose people money, counterfeit drugs could make people sick and the profit often makes criminals rich.
"Proceeds of these goods have gone to support international criminal organizations involved in human smuggling, terrorism, narcotics trafficking," he said.
Customs officials said the port has seized 9,553 pounds of narcotics from October 2023 to October 2024 — including more than 55 pounds of heroin, 1,205 pounds of cocaine and 1,801 pounds of meth.
The shipping methods have been changing, according to Clark.
Some banned products are being sent into the U.S. in so-called "master cartons." Clark showed WCPO one of these shipments containing dozens of pre-packaged and labeled bundles of testosterone-based steroids.
The shippers plan to have someone in the U.S. take the packages and dump them into the mail separating them from the original shipper making it more difficult for investigators to track the illegal items back to their origin.
Some of the shipments that get flagged into the system are likely drugs but must be tested in a small laboratory through the Gemini Machine.
CBP officials brought a bag of tan powder into the laboratory for testing during WCPO's visit.
Clark said the powder was a chemical that, if it hadn't been intercepted, would later be combined with reagents to make synthetic marijuana.
"Now, the trend in narcotics is we're seeing parts of narcotics shipped into the United States to be made and completed here," he said.
Clark said criminals are constantly getting more clever about ways to sneak contraband into the U.S. so it's up to the CBP agents to adapt, learn and counter those efforts.
"We have an ability, and a unique ability, to directly impact our communities. We have the ability to target, prevent, illicit goods from entering our country," he said.
Clark said some of the responsibility does fall on the consumer to prevent counterfeit items from arriving on their doorstep.
He said any deal that appears too good to be true likely is, and it's important to vet websites for credibility before clicking the buy button. He said simple checks are physical addresses and valid phone numbers where customer support can be reached.
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