The Mystery of The Fake Goldman Sachs Bank Found In China

China is a country known for it’s amazing fake merchandise. From Rolex watches to Louis Vuitton, the country is renowned for it’s almost-identical fakes. A bank in China has taken the idea of Chinese forgery to an entirely new level – A Goldman Sachs (Shenzhen) Financial Leasing Company was discovered to be operating in the country with absolutely no connection to the massive US investment conglomerate.

According to RT News:

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The Goldman Sachs Connection?

“We don’t have any connection with the US Goldman Sachs, we just picked the name out, and it’s not intentionally the same,” a woman who answered the company’s listed phone number told AFP.

The company uses the same Chinese characters, gao sheng, as the real Goldman Sachs, and its English font is evocative of the US bank’s.

Bloomberg made a filing with the Shenzhen government that reveals the replica Goldman Sachs has been operating since May 2013.

شارع تجاري في الصين بمنطقة Jiangsu يتميز بوجود ماركات كلها مزيفة فـ Zara=Zare H&M=H&N Starbucks=Sffcccks BOSS=BGSS pic.twitter.com/1Xlgvk8IgE

— Eyad إيـــاد (@Eyaaaad) April 15, 2015

It’s not the first case of setting up fake banks in China. A 39-year-old man in eastern China’s Shandong Province was arrested this month after starting a fake branch of the China Construction Bank with card readers, passbooks, teller counter and convincing looking logos, the Xinhua news agency reported. The bank was taking deposits but didn’t allow withdrawals.

“It’s notoriously difficult for an overseas claimant to persuade the Chinese courts that there has been trademark infringement. There’s still a practice of whoever registers first wins,” Paul Haswell, a Hong Kong-based partner at law firm Pinsent Masons told Bloomberg.

Basketball legend Michael Jordan lost a case in July against a local sportswear company that used his name in Chinese.

In 2012, Apple paid $60 million to Proview Technology (Shenzhen) that first registered the iPad trademark in China in 2001.