Onur Aksoy, the CEO of a gaggle of corporations controlling a number of on-line storefronts, was sentenced to 6 and a half years in jail for promoting $100 million value of counterfeit Cisco community tools to authorities, well being, training, and army organizations worldwide.
The 40-year-old Florida man was arrested in Miami on June 29, 2022, and was charged the identical day with a number of counts of trafficking counterfeit items and committing mail and wire fraud.
In June 2023, he pleaded responsible to conducting this huge operation via 19 corporations and 25 eBay and Amazon on-line storefronts, collectively often known as Professional Community Entities.
In line with the plea settlement, he imported tens of 1000’s of modified low-quality networking units from Hong Kong and Chinese language counterfeiters for as a lot as 98 % off Cisco’s prompt retail value.
These units all had “counterfeit Cisco labels, stickers, boxes, documentation, and packaging, all bearing counterfeit trademarks registered and owned by Cisco that made the goods falsely appear to be new, genuine, and high-quality devices manufactured and authorized by Cisco.”
The indictment states that the counterfeit Cisco merchandise have been offered as new and real units on Amazon and eBay to prospects in america and abroad, with many ending within the networks of hospitals, colleges, authorities businesses, and even the U.S. army.
Nevertheless, the units offered by Professional Community Entities got here with efficiency, performance, and issues of safety as a result of they have been as an alternative older fashions modified to seem like newer and dearer real units.
These points usually led to failures and malfunctions, which considerably broken buyer operations and networks.
​Between 2014 and 2022, the U.S. Customs and Border Safety intercepted 180 shipments of counterfeit Cisco units that have been being despatched to Professional Community Entities.
In response to those seizures, Aksoy used faux aliases for the paperwork and listed a faux supply deal with in Ohio to distance Professional Community Entities and evade scrutiny from authorities.
Afterward, the Chinese language distributors have been instructed to ship the merchandise in smaller packages on completely different days to reduce the probabilities of being inspected.
“Between 2014 and 2019, Cisco sent seven letters to Aksoy asking him to cease and desist his trafficking of counterfeit goods. Aksoy responded to at least two of these letters by causing his attorney to provide Cisco with forged documents,” the DOJ stated in a press launch revealed on Thursday.
“In July 2021, agents executed a search warrant at Aksoy’s warehouse that led to the seizure of approximately 1,156 counterfeit Cisco devices with a retail value of over $7 million.”
Aksoy was sentenced to 6 years and 6 months in jail for operating this scheme and profiting thousands and thousands. Per the plea settlement, he may also must pay Cisco restitution of $100 million and permit the destruction of counterfeit merchandise value thousands and thousands of {dollars} seized from his companies.
