Tech CEO Gets 6 Years for Selling Fake Cisco Gear on Amazon, eBay

upstart writes:

Tech CEO Gets 6 Years for Selling Fake Cisco Gear on Amazon, eBay:

A Miami-based CEO will serve over six years in prison for selling counterfeit Cisco equipment to numerous buyers on Amazon and eBay, with some of the shoddy hardware ending up in sensitive US government systems.

On Wednesday, 40-year-old Onur Aksoy was sentenced to six years and six months in prison for raking in at least $100 million from the counterfeit sales.

Aksoy committed the fraud from at least 2013 to 2022 - the year he was arrested- by buying the fake Cisco equipment from suppliers in China. The counterfeits were then resold as legitimate Cisco products for an estimated retail value of over $1 billion.

"Aksoy sold hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of counterfeit computer networking equipment that ended up in US hospitals, schools, and highly sensitive military and other governmental systems, including platforms supporting sophisticated US fighter jets and military aircraft," Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri said in a statement.

The scheme persisted for nearly a decade, with Aksoy selling the counterfeit gear through 19 companies, along with 15 Amazon storefronts and at least 10 eBay storefronts, according to the Justice Department. But the fake hardware performed poorly once installed.

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