A 21-year-old man was ar­rest­ed and quan­ti­ties of coun­ter­feit items worth over $57,000 were seized dur­ing an op­er­a­tion con­duct­ed by the Mul­ti-Agency Task Force (MATF), in the South West­ern Di­vi­sion last Fri­day.

The joint op­er­a­tion in­clud­ed per­son­nel of the MATF, Min­istry of Health’s Chem­istry, Food and Drug Di­vi­sion, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Bu­reau of Stan­dards, the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties’ Gov­ern­ment Elec­tri­cal In­spec­torate, the Min­istry of Labour’s OS­HA De­part­ment, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vices’ Fire Pre­ven­tion De­part­ment and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion’s Cus­toms En­force­ment De­part­ment and was con­duct­ed in the Pe­nal dis­trict.

Dur­ing the ex­er­cise, three busi­ness­es were searched for coun­ter­feit items and il­le­gal gam­bling ac­tiv­i­ties.

As a re­sult, $57,665 in coun­ter­feit items and $34,744 rel­a­tive to il­le­gal gam­bling ac­tiv­i­ties were seized.

One restau­rant and bar own­er was ar­rest­ed for man­ag­ing a Com­mon Gam­ing House.