20,000 fake Lavie bottles filled with tap water sold across Hanoi

Investigators said Le Van Viet, the ringleader, bought used Lavie-branded 19-liter and 18.5-liter bottles from unverified sources on the market.

At a workshop hidden deep in an alley on Nguyen Van Cu Street, Long Bien Ward, Viet and his accomplices used a full production setup: sealing machines, date stampers, shrink-wrap film, Lavie labels and cleaning chemicals to turn tap water into what appeared to be genuine mineral water.

Three workers were hired to scrub, rinse, and dry the bottles before filling them directly with tap water. The finished fakes were then loaded onto a truck and distributed to three warehouses around the city, where they were mixed with real Lavie bottles before being sold to offices and residents for VND70,000 (US$2.66) per bottle.

Police said the counterfeit bottles cost only about VND10,000 each to produce, but the group managed to sell roughly 20,000 bottles between March and October at seven times more.

When officers raided the facility on Oct. 2, they seized over 500 fake bottles and detained four suspects: Viet, Pham Tien Hung, Le Thi Cham and Ly Quoc Khanh, on charges of producing and trading counterfeit food and beverages under the Penal Code.