A Florida resident was sentenced to 78 months for operating a counterfeit rip-off that generated $100 million in income from pretend networking gear and put the US army’s safety in danger, the US Division of Justice (DOJ) introduced Thursday.
Onur Aksoy, aka Ron Aksoy and Dave Durden, pleaded responsible on June 5, 2023, to 2 counts of an indictment charging him with conspiring with others to site visitors in counterfeit items, to commit mail fraud, and to commit wire fraud. His sentence, handed down on Might 1, additionally consists of an order to pay $100 million in restitution to Cisco, a $40,000 nice, and three years of supervised launch. Aksoy will even should pay his victims a sum {that a} courtroom will decide at an unspecified future date, the DOJ mentioned.
Based on the indictment [PDF], Aksoy started plotting the rip-off round August 2013, and the operation ran till at the least April 2022. Aksoy used at the least 19 corporations and about 15 Amazon storefronts, 10 eBay ones, and direct gross sales—recognized collectively as Professional Community Entities—to promote tens of hundreds of pc networking units. He imported the merchandise from China and Hong Kong and used pretend Cisco packaging, labels, and paperwork to promote them as new and actual. Official variations of the merchandise would’ve bought for over $1 billion, per the indictment.
The DOJ’s announcement this week mentioned the units had an estimated retail worth of “a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars}” and that Aksoy personally obtained tens of millions of {dollars}.
Faux Cisco tech utilized in Air Drive, Military, and Navy functions
The US army used gear bought from Aksoy’s scheme, which jeopardized delicate functions, together with help platforms for US fighter jets and different sorts of army plane, per authorities officers.
In an announcement this week, Bryan Denny, particular agent in control of the US Division of Protection (DoD) Workplace of Inspector Basic, Protection Prison Investigative Service within the Western Area Workplace, mentioned that Aksoy “knowingly defrauded the Division of Protection by introducing counterfeit merchandise into its provide chain that routinely failed or didn’t work in any respect.” He added:
In doing so, he bought counterfeit Cisco merchandise to the DoD that had been discovered on quite a few army bases and in varied techniques, together with however not restricted to US Air Drive F-15 and US Navy P-8 plane flight simulators.
The DOJ’s announcement mentioned that Aksoy’s counterfeit units ended up “utilized in extremely delicate army and governmental functions—together with labeled info techniques—some involving fight and non-combat operations of the US Navy, US Air Drive, and US Military, together with platforms supporting the F-15, F-18, and F-22 fighter jets, AH-64 Apache assault helicopter, P-8 maritime patrol plane, and B-52 Stratofortress bomber plane.”
Units bought by way of the rip-off additionally wound up in hospitals and faculties, the announcement mentioned.
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