A Florida male has pleaded guilty to producing more than $100m from importing and marketing counterfeit Cisco networking devices.
Onur Aksoy, 39, of Miami, pleaded guilty to conspiring with other folks to visitors in counterfeit merchandise, to commit mail fraud, and to commit wire fraud and mail fraud. He is experiencing everywhere among four and six-and-a-50 percent a long time driving bars and should forfeit $15m in illicit gains made from the scheme, in accordance to the Division of Justice (DoJ).
Twin US/Turkish citizen Aksoy ran at minimum 19 firms in New Jersey and Florida, along with 15 Amazon storefronts and at least 10 eBay storefronts, which prosecutors collectively referred to as the “Pro Network Entities.”
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In accordance to court docket paperwork, he imported tens of countless numbers of knock-off Cisco networking gadgets from China and Hong Kong, complete with phony labels, stickers, containers, documentation and packaging built to make them surface to be real products.
These products had been older items, normally beforehand offered or discarded, which Chinese forgers modified to make them surface newer, additional expensive equipment. Generally, pirated Cisco software package and unreliable and unauthorized factors were being also included, together with components developed to circumvent Cisco anti-piracy checks.
In accordance to the DoJ, quite a few of these products and solutions experienced from functionality issues and in some circumstances malfunctioned, harming customers’ networks and functions. A single regrettable business enterprise missing tens of countless numbers of dollars in the system, court paperwork claimed.
Some recipients seemingly bundled hospitals, educational institutions, governing administration companies and the armed forces.
Aksoy is also mentioned to have falsely submitted official paperwork to Customs and Border Safety (CBP) beneath an alias and made use of faux addresses in Ohio to get shipments. CBP evidently seized 180 counterfeit shipments from Pro Network Entities among 2014 and 2019.
Even further, among 2014 and 2019, Cisco sent 7 cease and desist letters to Aksoy, with the latter responding at least 2 times by using his legal professional with solid documents. In July 2021, brokers searched his warehouse and seized 1156 counterfeit Cisco units with a retail worth of more than $7m.
Some parts of this article are sourced from:
www.infosecurity-magazine.com