A furniture company in Takamatsu sold nearly 20,000 items of furniture featuring forged made-in-prison stickers between 1998 and 2002, prison sources said Friday.

The stickers carried the CAPIC logo designed by the Correctional Association, a prison welfare organization affiliated with the Justice Ministry.

Genuine CAPIC stickers are thought to increase sales by informing consumers that a piece of furniture is made of higher quality materials bought with the savings on labor expenses. They also tug on consumers' charitable inclinations.

The furniture firm, one of 10 firms designated by the Justice Ministry as a "prison sponsor company," forged 60,000 CAPIC seals and sold about 19,400 pieces of "CAPIC furniture" actually produced by local manufacturers.