NEW YORK – A man has been charged with selling knockoff costumes of popular children’s cartoon characters – including Barney and Dora, Superman and Scooby Doo – to a person he believed to be a porn film producer, according to the Queens district attorney.

Julio Quevedo, 43, of Queens, was charged with trademark counterfeiting, District Attorney Robert Brown said Tuesday.

An investigation into Quevedo’s alleged operation began last year after the DA’s office was contacted by Hit Entertainment, the licensed trademark holder of many of the animated children’s characters that suspected Quevedo was illegally selling bogus adult-size versions of its children’s costumes.

“A one-man counterfeiting operation like the one discovered here is capable each year of fleecing legitimate owners of trademark products out of tens of thousands of dollars, substantial sums in lost royalties,” Brown said in a statement.

During a sting operation an undercover private investigator purchased a fake Bob the Builder from Quevedo for $250, Brown said. Then an undercover agent from the DA’s office, posing as the investigator’s wife, told Quevedo she needed costumes for roles in erotic movies. Quevedo took her to a storage facility on Saturday that contained an assortment of costumes, including Thomas the Tank Engine and Tasmanian Devil, Brown said.

Hit Entertainment and Warner Brothers were brought to the scene and verified that the costumes were counterfeit, he said.

Brown said Quevedo told investigators that his family had been selling the bogus costumes for four years, and that his father-in-law manufactured them at a factory in Lima, Peru.

Quevedo was arraigned Saturday in Queens Criminal Court on the counterfeiting charge, and faces up to four years in jail if convicted. He was released without bail and told to return to court on March 13.

Neither he nor his lawyer could be reached for comment.