tonight on "nightline," faking it. cops cracking down on knockoff luxury goods where you would least expect them. . tonight on nightline, we will take you along on a sting operation. c.k.'s career didn't explode till he did things his way. tonight, the power and freedom of saying whatever is on your mind. and throw her a bone. his latest film "hugo" nominated for 11 oscars but martin scorsese is still fuming from one snub this award season. tonight, his bid to get the dog

nominated for a first ever golden collar award. good evening. i'm bill weir. today marks a main event for shoppers. presidents' day. retail discounts typically among the deepest of the day today. before you open your wallet, consider this, some of those products might be fake. the black market for counterfeit goods in this country is exploding. seizures nationwide up 24% last year. these items are sold not only on street corners but in high-end shopping malls. ryan owens brings us this encore presentation. >> reporter: these cops aren't on the hunt for drugs or a murderer. at this luxury mall in the o.c., orange county, california, police are raiding a shop near nordstrom's and macy's.

the contra band these cops are after, counterfeit clothes. >> just relax. we have a search warrant. >> okay. >> reporter: santa ana police officers arrest the store manager. he's a cused of selling phony product, dolce, and a huge stash of true religion jeans. he pleaded not guilty. while police put their suspect in the car outside, the brains behind the bust is counting the merchandise inside. so there's not a real pair of true religion in this store that you've seen? >> so far, not that i've seen. this is a great hit. >> reporter: he's chris buckner. not a cop but a private investigator. the middle man between the police and the brands themselves. >> we're sort of like the counterfeit cops. anything the cops investigate regular crimes we're really doing here at our company for those brand owners we represent. >> could be real. i just need to take a better look at it. >> reporter: buckner shared some of his secrets on how to tell a fake. >> if this were authentic, it

would say true religion on the inside and there's nothing on it. one of the other things we do, the smell test on jeans. they're in plastic bags before they're dry, throw them on a container, smuggle them in the u.s. quite often, they have a mildoey smell to them. >> reporter: they are hatched here at the headquarters of his company, investigative consultants. >> this is our evidence storage facility. >> reporter: acting on tips, buckner's agents go undercover to gather evidence. how many different disguises do you have? >> oh, multiple. i change my clothes. i change my wigs. sunglasses. accessories. this watch has a camera inside the face of it. this is a key chain. this also does have an undercover camera in it. >> reporter: james bond would be jealous. here's video of an undercover purchase. what investigators believe is a pair of counterfeit headphones. here, the subject shows the goods and money is handed over.

>> there's a darker side than what the public even knows. it's huge. it's beyond what anybody can even comprehend. >> reporter: buckner says counterfeiters do a lot more than rip off high-end designers. he says their money funds gangs, organized crime, even terrorist organizations. so you're saying here i am, a guy just trying to get a good-looking pair of jeans or cool sunglasses and i have no idea where that money ends up. >> you have no idea. >> reporter: there's an attitude this is a victimless crime. do you run into that attitude with law enforcement? >> we don't want law enforcement to look at us or the brand owners and say you're wasting my time on a really tiny case and not a good case. our job is to make sure we bring them something they will evaluate. majority of the cases we do all get prosecuted. >> reporter: the warehouse in the back of their office proves that. >> you have everything from luxury goods to tennis shoes. you name it, it's in here. >> reporter: a mountain of confiscated goods. boxed up and stored as evidence for trial.

police are the first to say they couldn't do it without buckner. >> what chris does for us is pretty much 50% of our tips and investigations. >> reporter: it's not just the investigative work. >> we'll peel off, continue to -- >> reporter: he also goes on the raid. we tagged along for this one with the lapd. chris waits a few blocks away to get that call. >> perfect. >> reporter: this time, officers arrest this woman for selling goods out of a makeshift store in an area of downtown los angeles known as the city's counterfeit capital. her shop may not look like much but police say he is part of a crew making more than a half million dollars a year. >> it's about $2,000 a day. >> reporter: their evidence, allegedly in her own handwriting. >> we got the subject we were looking for, recovered counterfeit merchandise. nobody got hurt. so huge success. >> reporter: but success is tough to measure when the

problem is this massive and buckner doesn't have to look far for a rye minder of that. the port of los angeles is the largest in the country. a major entry point for illegal goods. most of them from china. 14,000 containers come through here every day. that's a shipment every seven seconds. officials are trying to keep up. >> with the volume we get here in los angeles, i believe the smuggler is pretty sure that if they send 20 containers, that a few of them are going to go through. >> reporter: but chris buckner is sure trying. last year alone, he took about a quarter of a billion dollarscou the street. >> until they stop buying, this problem's going to continue to get better. >> reporter: i'm ryan owens for "nightline" in orange county, california. >> our thanks to ryan. coming up, a genuine article. the insurrectional comedian

louie c.k. on the importance of telling it like it is. ♪ [ male announcer ] the 2012 m-class continually monitors blind spots, scans the road to reveal potential threats, even helps awaken its driver if he begins to doze. so in the blink of an eye it will have performed more active safety measures than most cars will in a lifetime. introducing the all-new 2012 m-class. see your authorized mercedes-benz dealer for exceptional offers through mercedes-benz financial services.

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to his fans, he's the guy on stage armed with a microphone and the truth. to his colleagues, he's the comic's comic who bucked the system and won. to himself, louis c.k. is something of a mess, a flawed work in progress that must be built and rebuilt over and over from scratch. our own core presentation of tonight's "seriously funny." guy walks into a bar -- >> louis c.k. >> reporter: and everybody loves him, the comedians who consider him best in their game, the crowd who hired sitters on a weeknight just hoping he might drop by. after all, this is the club he enters at the beginning of his critically acclaimed hit show. ♪ louis louis louis this guy has to feel amazing, right? yeah. not so much. >> prepare to be very disappointed with what's going to follow. >> reporter: you see, as the hottest comedian of the moment told me a few hours before, he has no jokes.

louis c.k. just tore up his entire act and is starting from scratch with a few scribbled notes. >> bus boy, baby rape. >> reporter: and a gut full of self-doubt. you ever worry that there are a finite number of joins that will come out of your brain? >> yes, it terrifies me, constant worry. every joke i come up with, i have the fear that it's the last one. >> reporter: hell of an admission from a guy with the greatest sitcom deal in the history of television. >> i'm not wearing any clothing and you're young -- >> reporter: here's how it works. suits at fx give him money and he makings a show. by himself. no writer. no executive producer. no editor. this is louis exists in this one bag? >> everything happens in this bag. all the work i do happens in here. this is my laptop that i edit the whole show open, write the whole show on this, and edit the

show on this. >> reporter: like seinfeld anena comedian, raw, brutally honest. >> why does she get one and not me? >> because she's a separate person from you. you're never going to get the same things. it's not going to happen ever in your life so you might as well learn that now. >> reporter: laying bare every flaw possible in a divorced single dad. >> women try to compete. like, i'm a pervert, you don't know. i have really sick sexual thoughts. no, you have no idea. you have no idea. you're a tourist in sexual per version. i'm a prisoner there. >> reporter: louis c.k. live at the theater. >> i want you to take my ashes and sprinkle -- i'm not doing none of that [ bleep ]. you're dead. i'm not going to run errands for you after you're dead.

>> reporter: it's a special he not only wrote, produced and edited but is also distributing himself on his website for 5 bucks a pop. and just now you made yourself laugh. are you listening to -- >> i like the jokes. >> reporter: long way from that first open mic night as a suburban boston teenager. >> yeah, i went on, i did a minute and a half i think. you're supposed to do five. i couldn't get through it. it was terrible. it was a terrible feeling. >> reporter: but he was so fascinated by his own discomfort he made it a career. >> real bad flu. coughing up -- >> reporter: driving through the night to tell jokes at holiday inn bars for insulting amounts of money. >> it's like -- then he keeps smoking -- >> reporter: after 15 years of grinding, after getting passed over when all his peers joined "saturday night live," he bottomed out, stopped telling the same absurdist jokes and started telling the truth. >> every 20-year-old i encounter

behind the counter gives me that look. this job sucks. yeah, that's why we gave it to you! something happens where you just don't care. it's not that you don't care it's just, you know, you can't keep faking it. you can't keep being fake. some people either harden into sort of a glazed version of their fake selves or you let it go and you go, all right. i said to myself at some point i'm either going to stop this or i'm going to do the wrong version of it. >> reporter: the more he stayed true to his gut, the better he did. his quirky short films got him writing gigs with conan o'brien and chris rock. then hollywood started to beat him up. he lost creative control of his first film "pootie tang" and saw hbo kill "lucky louis" after a season. he also became a dad. lesson for all of us, the moment he put kids first, his career exploded. >> because i said i don't leave

new york. i only work 3 1/2 days a week. i held out till i got this show. i don't work for other people. i make my own schedule. that's why the show's good. >> reporter: you talk about your nonsex life. >> yeah. >> reporter: certainly you must be getting more game -- >> when i first got divorced, i [ bleep ] around, it was fun. then i quickly realized, you know -- when you're young, you're like, there's a woman, i want to have sex with her. now when you're 44 and you have life and you have kids, you're like, there's a stranger in my bed. that is not cool. and i -- we're naked. this is a nightmare. i don't know her. it's more of life making fun of you. that's all it is. so people that get successful and they start saying, of course i am, you know, i'm special. no, you're not. you're a dirty monkey. and you, you freak lucked into a pile of money. and it's going to be gone at some point. >> reporter: so back at the comedy cellar, he starts from

scratch. >> because bus boys get ignored, insanely ignored. you can be at dinner with your friend and the bus boy's filling glasses and you're just like, so that's where i hid the dead people i murdered. anyway, good night, thank you. >> reporter: if this night is any indication -- so how did that feel? >> i liked it. i liked the tension when i don't really know the stuff yet. >> reporter: as long as he just keeps speaking that twisted mind, he'll have plenty of jokes that kill -- see you, louis. thanks, friend. and fans that relate. >> -- you saved my life -- >> louis said he made 1 million buck, the first week and a half after he put out the first comedy special. next, director martin scorsese is hopping mad. it has to do with that yawning pooch. [ male announcer ] at home, you play a lot of roles.

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there are few people in hollywood who could get away with comparing robert de niro and leonardo dicaprio in their most famous roles to the work of a dog. literally, a dog. but martin scorsese can and did in a recent conversation with abc's nick watt. here's what else he said. >> reporter: scorsese's furious because blacky, the doberman, an iconic brooding presence throughout his masterpiece wasn't even nominated for the first annual golden collar awards. do you think the dog can actually act? >> yes. >> reporter: apparently sources close to the golden collars were spreading rumors that blacky had unfairly benefited from computer animation. >> i mean, literally, why didn't the committee call us and say, hey, was that dog cgi'd? huh. >> reporter: scorsese himself mounted a campaign. he wrote an editorial in the "l.a. times" demanding a nomination for blacky. your own history with the

awards, i mean, as a cinema lover, i would say you've been unjustly overlooked yourself. >> that's one of the reasons -- >> reporter: is that why you're getting? >> that's one of the reasons why i'm going to stand up for this dog. in a sense, i drew the line here, with blacky. >> reporter: the human stars are hugo and george malais, who actually did exist, a pioneer of early cinema. >> he was rediscovered. he lived to see -- >> reporter: his dogs? >> yes, i think so. >> blacky! stay. >> oh, blacky. >> reporter: the interview began to fall apart. blacky was bored of both of us. >> go and slobber on martin's jacket. >> my entire arm is drenched. >> reporter: the suit is italian. probably ruined. scorsese forgave her. the air cleared. he explained what really happened this award season. >> we all know about rin tin

tin. we all know about lassie. all those beautiful dogs. heroes. but blacky has to play a really tough character. [ dog growls ] i think what happened here, especially this golden collar situation, the golden collar awards, is that because the part she played, which she played brilliantly, she was overlooked because of being the anti-hero. ♪ >> reporter: it was a tough year for canine best actor. what with uggie in "the artist." in "hugo" blacky plays a police dog to sasha barren cohen's policeman. similar head tilts and expressions. >> she doesn't like to talk about sasha that much. she had to carry him a lot in the picture, know what i mean? >> reporter: i'm nick watt for "nightline" in london. thank you for watching abc news. i do hope you'll meet me on "good morning america" tomorrow. you'll get your first glimpse ever of the chinese