You get to a certain age where you think you've seen everything. Then something like this comes along and you realize you haven't seen anything.
1) Are these people barred from legitimately selling helicopters? Perhaps some sanctions?
2) Making a helicopter fly with the right engineering and control system is monumentally difficult - doesn't matter if its a knock off, assembled from parts or OEM.
3) Where did they get the skills and how did they acquire them? Did they have the capital to purchase a few originals and take them apart?
4) At this point, why not just sell them legitimately? Regulatory requirements prohibitive?
For there must be demand. Otherwise all the planning, capital raising, investment, hiring, construction, accounting, etc. necessary for starting and operating this bootleg helicopter factory would have never been done in the fist place.
Who would want to buy bootleg helicopters? Is it developing countries seeking to save a bit of money by buying them in the black market? Or two-bit dictators who cannot buy helicopters through more, ahem, official channels due to trading sanctions? Assorted unsavory characters from the criminal underworld? Self-made entrepreneurs who want to get a good deal on a "genuine-looking" Soviet helicopter?
Surreal.
The buyer is not necessarily sitting in it, people have built submarines powered by humans to smuggle drugs after all.
I don't know anything about aircraft. However if I was to fly myself one I'd want to know enough about it to verify its safety independently. If I had the skill to verify the safety independently (effectively I'd have to be a pilot/helicopter mechanic), I wouldn't care all that much about the paperwork.
Boeing still has a market
The good thing is I get a chuckle out of bootlegged products when an error can kill you.
I figured most people would say “no” to bootleg helicopters, heart valves, baby toys, but apparently I’m wrong. There is a market!
“illegally producing copies of Soviet-type Kamov KA-26 helicopters...”