It is interesting to know

 Reading

A. Read the text about a detective agency which exposes people who copy famous goods and answer these questions.

1. How does the writer feel about faking fashion goods?

2. Why was Gerry’s assignment dangerous?

3. What trap did Miguel set for Gerry?

B. Match each of the following headings A-D to the paragraphs you have read (1-4).

A Risky business. B A fairer deal. C Don’t be clever. D Fighting back.

1 In most markets you can buy fashion goods. They may look like the real thing and carry famous labels but nearly all fake. But does this really matter if it means we can dress fashionably but cheaply? Don’t we pay far too much for fashion goods anyway? Aren’t the manufactures of the genuine articles just exploiting our ridiculous snobbery?

2 Understandably, they don’t agree and employ investigator Vincent Carratu to find out who is making the counterfeit goods. Carratu heads his own investigation agency specializing in this kind of crime. Once he knows who the criminals are, he pretends to be a buyer. When he has enough evidence, he contacts the police.

3 It is a dangerous game, so Carratu takes on as his agents ex-policemen with experience of undercover work. They need to be able to act and have nerves of steel, as this example shows. One of Carratu’s agents, Gerry, was asked to look into a case involving imitation whisky. Gerry pretended to be a buyer for the American Mafia and made contact with the suppliers. In the meantime, the man who had told Carratu’s agency about the factory disappeared. He had almost certainly been murdered by the counterfeiters. Yet, despite the obvious dangers, Gerry continued and persuaded the gang that his story was true.

4 But one member, Miguel, was still suspicious and set a trap. He asked Gerry how whisky was made. Naturally, Gerry knew all about the process but realized that the kind of criminal he was playing wouldn’t know. “How should I know?” he replied. “I just drink the stuff.” At this, Miguel relaxed. There were no more problems and Garry obtained information which led to the arrest of the entire network. This included customs officers and policemen! At last the counterfeiters had been taken in.

С. How many words can you find in the text which express the idea of ‘authentic’ and not ‘authentic’?

D. Have you ever bought pirate brand clothes?

consumer goods manufactured goods commodities merchandise purchase shopping round/tour/trip to go shopping to do the shopping to shop for to do window-shopping cash register/cash desk to expose goods for sale to be on the counter for sale to be on display to be on sale to be in/out of stock

shopper/buyer/customer compulsive spending addict/shopaholick to be attended to to be served to queue up (for) to stand in line (Am E) the shop carries the best lines of shoes the shop deals in to be in great demand with the public a run for kid gloves to run out of to be short of to sell out to be sold out in a jiffy to have a wide/scanty choice/selection/range of

Exercise 4

Fill in the blanks.