The streets of New York are going to hell in a fake Prada handbasket.
Dozens of bogus designer purse peddlers have turned the area around Rockefeller Center into a congestion-clogged black market — as they hawk knock-off bags to tourists just weeks after cops tried to clean up Lower Manhattan with a $10 million counterfeit swag bust.
At least 30 vendors have set up shop on the sidewalks between 48th and 50th Streets on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan to sell phony Louis Vuitton, Prada and Dior handbags and clutches, The Post has learned.
“It’s a mess, people tripping over bags and being hustled. It used to only be on Canal [Street], now it’s Uptown. It’s just a sign of disorder,” a Manhattan cop said.
The bogus bag sellers appear to have increased in recent weeks, clogging the sidewalk with lines of deal-hunters — often right under the noses of police officers, who are stationed nearby for crowd control.
They’re here every year, more and more everyday it seems,” said an employee of Madison Square Garden, who commutes through the busy strip of Midtown. “Some of it’s fake and some of it’s real but people don’t really know what they’re buying.”
She added, “This is really questionable, ethically.”
Though legitimate versions of the handbags cost thousands of dollars, the fakes — which were sometimes spread out blankets on the ground — were going for $40 to $80 on the street when The Post took inventory Wednesday night.
The knock-offs included a medium Dior Book Totes, which cost $3,500 when real, that one vendor had priced at $70 to $80.
Classic brown Louis Vuitton Neverfull Totes, which cost $2,100 in stores, were going for $70 a pop. And Cassandre Saint Laurent Matelasse chain wallets, which cost $1,790, were $40.
One vendor said the two-block strip is a hotspot for targeting tourists during the busy shopping season, while another was seen scrambling to hide merchandise as a police officer walked by.
A security guard at the skyscraper 1251 Sixth Avenue said he’d noticed a “100%” uptick in the vendors in the area in recent weeks.
“We complain to the police department but that’s all we can do,” he said of lines of buyers crowding sidewalks.
The flagrant counterfeit sales were happening within blocks of police officers who have been assigned to direct traffic and manage holiday crowds.
One Midtown police source said the recent increase in knock-off vendors on the two-block strip was roughly similar to last year during the holiday season.
The influx in counterfeit purse peddlers comes after cops in Lower Manhattan netted more than $10 million in “high-end” counterfeit goods during a crackdown on illegal street vendors on Nov. 28, police officials said.
The NYPD’s sweep of fake designer purses, sneakers and other illicit goods on Canal Street led to 17 total arrests with vendors facing felony charges of trademark counterfeiting property over $1,000, Chief of Patrol Jeff Maddrey said after the bust.
At the time, Maddrey also vowed that the department would step up its citywide crackdown of knock-off vendors.
“We recognize during the holidays, activities such as this will increase, and our efforts to deter this conduct, to investigate this conduct, will be ongoing,” he said in November.
In August, a huge NYPD sting also netted as much as $2 million in knockoff designer goods on Canal Street near Broadway but that didn’t stop phony peddlers from popping up in the same area within months.
