Fake Cuban cigars? Surely not - but then again, why not? Everything under the sun is being copied these days - you can get fake designer watches, fake designer purses, fake designer running shoes - but fake Cuban cigars? Surely there has to be a limit to all this fakery somewhere and it’s almost sacrilege to fake something as pure as a Cuban cigar!

The Cohiba Glass Top Box is one of the most famous fakes. There is no real Cohiba product in a glass top box.

Well when it comes to cigars there is a limit because these ‘fake’ cigars really are being made in Cuba (as well as other countries) but they certainly aren’t being made in all those well-known Cuban cigar factories no matter what the branding on the box and on the rings and other official looking certificates might say.

But then this operation isn’t like what the fake watch/purse/shoe operation is like. Those things really are fakes and nothing is real no matter how much they may look real. I mean, you only have to walk through some of the huge wholesale centers in China to realize that quite a bit of its economy is geared up to supply that fake market.

Over there you can get anything and everything with a brand name on it and everything - right down to the stickers that say the item is compliant with whatever the regulation governing that item might be - is a total fake. Yep there are wholesalers over there that can sell you sheets of stickers guaranteeing whatever you might want to attach them to is passed and totally in compliance with whatever local rule or regulation you want it to comply with.

That’s high-tech fakery and that’s well beyond anything that might come out of Cuba so how do they manage to fake the branded boxes, the rings and other official looking certificates? Well they don’t fake them at all … instead they steal them from the very factories whose names appear on the boxes. That’s right - there’s nothing fake about the packaging at all - it’s 100% genuine!

 
Even the tobacco is 100% genuine and comes from some of the finest growing regions in Cuba. You see the tobacco farmers want to make a decent living too so not everything they grow is sold to the government controlled factories. Quite a bit of it is sold on the black market and that means that it ends up in the back rooms of houses in back streets all over Cuba and it’s in those back rooms in back streets where the ‘fake’ cigars are being made.