Standing before piles of Kate Spade purses, Burberry wallets, and stacks of compact discs, the city comptroller, William Thompson Jr., announced yesterday that New York City had lost more than $1 billion in revenues last year as result of a booming $23 billion counterfeiting industry.

“This illegal trade activity is depriving our residents of necessary tax revenue at a time when New York City is emerging from one of its worst fiscal crises ever and is still facing fiscal shortfalls,” Mr. Thompson told reporters yesterday, ahead of the busiest shopping day of the holiday season, the Friday after Thanksgiving.

“What these goods have in common is they represent theft.”

According to a report released yesterday by the comptroller’s office, the city’s lost revenue from fake purses, jerseys, DVDs, and other knockoff products amounted to an estimated $380 million in unpaid sales taxes, $290 million in unpaid business income taxes, and $360 million in uncollected personal income taxes. Together that could pay for a full-time nurse in every school, or 12,000 beat cops, the report said.

Counterfeiting isn’t a problem unique to New York. Nationwide, counterfeiting was a $287 billion industry last year. And most of the world’s fake goods – about 63% – end up in America, the report said.

Mr. Thompson’s point was that the consequences are hitting closer to home because the lower tax revenues are diminishing the city’s ability to pay for essential services and end up raising the tax burden for all New Yorkers.

The vice president of enforcement for the clothier Calvin Klein, Dawn Buonocore, went further. She said the counterfeiting industry was helping prop up terrorism.

“The top two ways to launder money are the drug trade and the counterfeiting trade because they are all in cash,” she told The New York Sun in an interview. “They have proven counterfeiting is linked to terrorism. When police have raids against counterfeiters on Canal Street and they follow the money, it takes them to Middle Eastern bank accounts.”

New York is particularly susceptible to the counterfeiting industry because of the city’s size and the flood of tourists who come here. Visitors generate a big appetite for both legal and counterfeit goods.

To combat the problem, the comptroller has recommended a series of steps including:

* create an industry task force that would include representatives from the state, city, and federal governments;

* get special, dedicated funds from the federal and state governments to beef up enforcement;

* increase public education regarding counterfeit trade;

* implement regulations that will make it easier for consumers to know when they are buying from legitimate street vendors as opposed to those selling fake goods;

* develop anti-counterfeiting intelligence – like what the music industry now uses – for industries that have not yet developed it.

The general counsel for Kate Spade, the manufacturer of handbags and shoes, had practical advice for those trying to avoid adding to the problem.

“If you are buying it in Chinatown or on the street,” Barbara Kolson said, “you aren’t buying the real thing.”