A Florida resident was sentenced to 78 months for working a counterfeit rip-off that generated $100 million in income from faux 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 Could 1, additionally consists of an order to pay $100 million in restitution to Cisco, a $40,000 fantastic, and three years of supervised launch. Aksoy will even need to pay his victims a sum {that a} court docket 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—identified collectively as Professional Community Entities—to promote tens of hundreds of laptop networking units. He imported the merchandise from China and Hong Kong and used faux Cisco packaging, labels, and paperwork to promote them as new and actual. Respectable variations of the merchandise would’ve offered for over $1 billion, per the indictment.
The DOJ’s announcement this week mentioned the units had an estimated retail worth of “a whole bunch of tens of millions of {dollars}” and that Aksoy personally acquired tens of millions of {dollars}.
Faux Cisco tech utilized in Air Drive, Military, and Navy purposes
The US army used gear bought from Aksoy’s scheme, which jeopardized delicate purposes, together with help platforms for US fighter jets and different sorts of army plane, per authorities officers.
In a press release this week, Bryan Denny, particular agent in command of the US Division of Protection (DoD) Workplace of Inspector Common, Protection Felony Investigative Service within the Western Discipline 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 offered counterfeit Cisco merchandise to the DoD that have been discovered on quite a few army bases and in numerous 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 purposes—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 means of the rip-off additionally wound up in hospitals and faculties, the announcement mentioned.
