Italian police have seized a haul of counterfeit retro game consoles worth almost €50m ($55.5m), reports the BBC.
Alessandro Langella, head of the economic crime unit for Turin's financial police, told the AFP news agency that 12,000 Chinese-made systems containing pirated video games were taken in the haul, all intended to be sold in physical video game stores or online.
The devices – designed to imitate classic systems made by Nintendo, Sega and Atari – came fitted with "non-certified batteries and electrical circuits", which meant they "failed to meet EU technical or safety standards."
The seized systems have since been destroyed, and nine Italian nationals have been arrested and charged with trading in counterfeited goods. Should they be found guilty, they could face up to eight years in prison.
This is an interesting turn of events when you consider that similar systems are being sold on Amazon as we speak, and Chinese firms such as Anbernic and PowKiddy ship their handheld systems with hundreds of ROMs they don't legally have the right to sell.
Back in 2019, hundreds of fake NES Classic systems – worth $800,000 – were seized in North America.