It was sheer happenstance that led to one of the largest ever seizures of counterfeit goods in New York City.

While busting a group breaking into a building on Broadway, police officers came upon several floors that had been cleverly divided into 66 “mini-malls,” where peddlers were selling counterfeit merchandise valued in the millions of dollars. Police hauled out thousands of garbage bags full of the articles, finishing up the job on Friday.

At about 4 a.m. on July 1, four burglars broke into 13-15 W. 27th St., a building used by peddlers to sell counterfeit merchandise, police said. When officers apprehended the suspects – Jose Quinones, 20; his brother, Christopher Quinones, 17; Emmanuel Rodriguez, 18, and a 14-year-old male charged as a juvenile – one said he had a brother still inside the building. The fifth suspect was not arrested, but police had long suspected the building housed counterfeit operations and the burglary enabled them to obtain a search warrant of the premises that day. Inside the nine-story building, where merchants sold wholesale and retail goods, only one business was legitimate, police said. The top two stories were vacant.

The city’s Department of Buildings posted a sign dated July 1 that said the first, second, and fourth through seventh floors were vacated because they had been “converted to a total of 66 retail sales rooms without two means of egress.”

Other violations cited on the bright-orange sign included obstruction of the ground-level rear fire escape, “unlawful door hardware,” and “exposed electrical boxes and wires within occupied space.”

The Department of Buildings’ Web site indicated various other infractions at the site, including for the illegal conversion of rooms in 2000, 2004, and earlier this year.

It took eight to 10 officers on each police shift between July 1 and Friday to pack up the illegal goods – which included sneakers, T-shirts, pants, handbags, sports jerseys, and other sports attire – into 18,000 black garbage bags. They tossed the bags to the first floor via a chute they rigged along the building’s edifice. The knockoffs were transported to storage in six tractor trailers, police said.

Eventually, the counterfeit goods will be incinerated.

Police made no arrests in the counterfeit operation because no merchants were present when the search warrant was carried out.

The police effort is part of a larger city initiative to clamp down on the widespread bootleg-peddler problem on the streets as well as in buildings in the Flatiron District, mainly in the 20s and 30s on Fifth and Sixth avenues as well as on Broadway.

On May 26, for example, the Mayor’s Office of Midtown Enforcement closed, by court order, an adjacent building, 17 W. 27th St., because of “trademark counterfeiting,” a sign on the front of the building said.

Peddler Hossein Abadi owns H & H Sportswear LLC, a legitimate business at 1149 Broadway between 26th and 27th streets.

He said police raided the upstairs floors of his building, which, unbeknownst to him, he had rented out to dealers of fake name-brand goods. Even though he said the city sued him for a figure reaching six digits, he appreciates the city’s efforts to shut down the operations of the counterfeit hawkers.

“I’m glad,” he said. “It’s helped our business definitely.”

For one thing, the counterfeiters undercut his selling power because they can offer at a higher price the same shirt he sells, but bearing a fake name brand insignia on it. He said that customers leave his store empty-handed when they do not see clothes with name brands.

A store manager at Hilda Fashion Inc., at 1189 Broadway between 28th and 29th streets, who refused to give his name, expressed the same problem. He said that the peddlers who market clothing with phony name brands essentially steal potential business.

In New York City alone, counterfeiting is a $23 billion industry that causes a loss or more than $1 billion in tax revenues each year, the city’s comptroller, William Thompson Jr., estimated. Counterfeiting is not just a problem in New York – it has cost businesses in America $250 billion a year, according to the United States Chamber of Commerce, and even more overseas.

The illegal peddling zone in the Flatiron District has been in the news in recent months. In June a tourist was shot in the area and in March the Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, announced that five police officers from the 13th Precinct were charged with accepting bribes from a peddler hawking counterfeit merchandise in exchange for tips on counterfeit raids and favors.

The shooting, the charges against the police officers, and the campaign against vendors selling fake merchandise have not scared some shoppers away.

On a recent Saturday, Kamyia Climer ate an Italian ice while helping her friend look for Michael Jordan sneakers in the stores along Broadway. The duo had traveled from Queens on a mission to find the sneakers at a bargain price. “We know over here it’s much cheaper,” Ms. Climer said.

Another shopper, Maria Bah, made the trip to New York City from Maryland exclusively to hit the peddlers in the Flatiron District. The reason? “It’s cheaper,” she said, adding that she can buy at wholesale prices and can easily walk from shop to shop.

That day, she purchased a winter jacket for her daughter for $15. She had seen a similar one for $100 in Maryland. She also bought a package containing White Diamond perfume, cream, and powder for $25 that she knew was the real thing because the price was the same as it would have been at home.