The Dominican Republic cigars manufactured by General cigar have a red, black and white band with the 'o' in Cohiba filled in red, hence the name Cohiba red dots. The cigars manufactured at the Montecristi factory have a label that is yellow, black and white and similar to the Cuban band. The difference is the words 'La Habana, Cuba' are replaced with words 'Republica Dominicana'. These are commonly called yellow band Dominican Cohiba.

The answer to the question lies here. The whole story can found at this link:

http://cigars.about.com/library/weekly/aa020302a.htm 

can we just smoke em in peace? my .02 cents

CA says they are fakes. I paid $2.00 for some. I thought that they were good smokes for the money.

Any cigar not in a "sealed" box may be a "fake", but these are not fake Cubans and not fake Red Dots. They might be fakes of the Dominican "Yellow Labels" made in the Montecristi factory in the Dominican Republic, but I don't know who would go through all that trouble to fake such an inexpensive cigar. There are plenty of factory sealed boxes of the "Yellow Labels" to be had at a good price. They are very good, fairly mild smokes that produce a nice, long, white ash. I still have the remains of a box of Esplendidos in the humi.

after having a few of these I gotta say that they're not bad. They don't knock my socks off or anything but they serve their purpose. The only problem with them is that out of the seven we have tried, three were plugged pretty hard and we had to give them up.

Time for some closure - I believe that these sticks are indeed counterfeit. I received a 'real' Cohiba Dominican and the label is yellow-stripe (as opposed to orange like these are) and just looking at the cigar and feeling the quality of tobacco, there is an obvious difference in the two. I wonder why if they were going to go through the trouble why they didn't make Habana labels. Oh well, these were free so no harm done. Just interesting.