OFF BEAT: Tiffany lawsuit says Costco is duping customers

Tiffany & Co. says there’s a reason it’s hard to imagine Audrey Hepburn casually tossing a few of its diamond rings into a shopping cart full of value-pack socks and three-gallon drums of Cheez Doodles.

The Manhattan-based fine jeweler filed a lawsuit against Costco Warehouse Corp. in federal court on Thursday, accusing the company of a litany of illegal business practices including trademark infringement, counterfeiting, dilution and false advertising.

According to the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Tiffany learned of the counterfeit rings from one of its customers in November 2012. An investigation allegedly revealed that the Issaquah, Wash.-based wholesale chain for year had been selling several styles of rings falsely branded and advertised as Tiffany merchandise.

“We now know that there are at least hundreds, if not thousands, of Costco members who think they bought a Tiffany engagement ring at Costco, which they didn’t,” Jeffrey Mitchell, a New York-based partner at Dickstein Shapiro L.L.P. representing Tiffany in the lawsuit, said Thursday in a statement. “This is not the kind of behavior people expect from a company like Costco, and this case will shed a much-needed light on this outrageous behavior.”

In its statement, Tiffany emphasized that the company “has never sold nor would it ever sell its fine jewelry through an off-price warehouse retailer like Costco, either directly or indirectly.”