Florida Resident Charged With Running Large Trafficking Scheme of Counterfeit Cisco Devices
Onur Aksoy, the CEO of multiple companies and a Miami resident, was indicted July 7 on charges of running a trafficking operation that imported fraudulent and counterfeit Cisco networking equipment worth over $1 billion, DOJ announced July 8. Aksoy ran at least 19 companies formed in New Jersey and Florida along with 15 Amazon storefronts, more than 10 eBay storefronts and various other entities that imported the counterfeit devices from China and Hong Kong, reselling them in the U.S. and abroad, falsely claiming that the goods were new. The scheme raked in over $100 million in revenue, DOJ said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Per the indictment, the imported devices were older, lower-model goods, which had been either sold or thrown away, that Chinese counterfeiters later modified to look like newer and more expensive Cisco products. The counterfeiters would add pirated Cisco software and unreliable components to get around Cisco software safeguards that check for license compliance and authenticate the hardware, DOJ said. The counterfeit goods sold by Aksoy's companies had multiple defects and safety problems.
From 2014 to 2022, CBP seized around 180 shipments of these counterfeit devices being shipped to Aksoy's companies from China and Hong Kong. In response, Aksoy allegedly falsely turned in paperwork to CBP under the name "Dave Durden" -- the name used to communicate with the Chinese counterfeiters. The Chinese parties then allegedly broke the shipments into smaller pieces and shipped them on different days. Aksoy was charged with one count of conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods and to commit mail and wire fraud, three counts of mail fraud, four counts of wire fraud and three counts of trafficking in counterfeit goods.