A Chinese national living in the US has been sentenced to 37 months in prison for taking part in a scheme to import counterfeit Apple products, the Department of Justice has announced. The products, which included fake iPhones and iPads, were smuggled from China into the US. After serving time, Jianhua "Jeff" Li, 44, will also get one year of supervised release, the DOJ said Tuesday.
More than 40,000 electronic devices and accessories, as well as fake labels and packaging with Apple trademarks, were trafficked and smuggled into the US between July 2009 and February 2014.
The fake labels and phony Apple products were shipped separately to avoid detection by customs, the DOJ said.
"The devices were then shipped to conspirators all over the United States," the Justice Department said. "Proceeds were funneled back to conspirator accounts in Florida and New Jersey via structured cash deposits and then a portion was transferred to conspirators in Italy, further disguising the source of the funds.
More than $1.1 million in sales proceeds were wired from US accounts into accounts that Li controlled overseas, the agency said.
https://www.cnet.com/news/counterfeit-apple-products-land-chinese-national-3-year-prison-sentence/
Also at:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-national-sentenced-over-three-years-prison-trafficking-counterfeit-apple-goods-united
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/fake-apple-chinese-national-3-years-smuggling-counterfeit-goods
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @02:27PM (5 children)
The only thing missing is the use of buttcoin to transfer the proceeds.
Supervised release? Why is he not getting deported?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 31 2019, @02:50PM (4 children)
Under law, deportation of green card holders depends on the severity of the crime.
I'm not sure what crime is even being committed by "smuggling" apple logos, which aren't contraband.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:54PM (3 children)
Just from the summary: smuggling itself, which is a serious crime if you weren't aware. Structuring. Pretty sure a free money laundering charge goes with that. Copyright and trademark infringements. Fraud.
Three years in prison is usually serious enough to eject foreign criminals, even if they hold a green card.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 31 2019, @04:11PM (2 children)
Let's go a bit more legalistic:
Smuggling charges under Chapter 27 would require one of two things: A. The things being brought in being illegal or B. Falsified papers about what was brought in. If this guy had legit papers saying he was carrying consumer electronics and paid appropriate levies, I don't think there's a case for that.
Copyright and trademark infringement are torts. Anyone going to jail for that would be real bad.
Structuring is indeed illegal, but the article doesn't clarify who made the structured cash deposits. It uses a passive voice. "Structured payments were made". If I had to guess, they busted this guy on a conspiracy charge related to this one.
Fraud would be an interesting case, I don't think there's a precedent for infringing trademarks being fraud, but the case law history there is probably pretty deep.
And the standard for green card revocation isn't measured in years in prison, but moral turpitude, i.e. crimes that show an intent or willingness to cause harm to others. DUIs, spousal abuse, robbery, murder, and rape are all ones with a lot of precedent. If they were convicted of fraud, as you say, that probably would be a deportable offense. The rest aren't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @01:49AM (1 child)
Wow, so you can make intelligent posts when your TDS isn't flaring up, impressive.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday August 01 2019, @04:01AM
Condemning republicans for their crimes against humanity is intelligent. Not doing it is pathetic.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 31 2019, @02:28PM (7 children)
How could they tell that a made-in-China telephone was a counterfeit of a made-in-China telephone?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:00PM
One has the fake $1 Apple logo, the other has the real $5000 Apple logo. The rest is identical.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:19PM (1 child)
Bruce Lee told them. And you don't argue with Bruce Lee, unless you are Chuck Norris. MAGA
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Wednesday July 31 2019, @06:00PM
Well, you certainly can't argue with Bruce any more. Sad as that may be. Still, I wouldn't mess with Chuck.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RS3 on Wednesday July 31 2019, @03:34PM (2 children)
Great question. I wonder, how do you fake something that complex? If they're that good at copying and making them, why don't they strike up a deal with Apple? Either way, I'm sure they're shipping them around the rest of the world. Maybe they're real ones, siphoned off of the assembly lines? "...conspirators in Italy", hmmm.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @08:20PM (1 child)
Copying something is much easier than creating it. It's much easier to reverse engineer an iPhone and then reproduce it than to create it in the first place. As a more obvious example, do you think that it really costs $20 to print out a physical book and ship it around the world to your door? Or does it only cost $2 to make and ship the thing, and the other $18 go to other purposes (including profit to the company making the product)?
Moreover, it could be the counterfeiters are using the same factories and paying the manufacturers on the down-low to run another production run.
That's assuming the product is good. If you want to make shoddy products (and why not, it's not YOUR name and reputation the line, after all), then there are lots more options. You can take the QA failed devices and sell them. You can create completely fake products and sell them, (such as 128GB USB drives which only are 1GB large and drop everything above that to /dev/null).
Creating counterfeits is easy. Creating counterfeits which have the quality of the original is more difficult, but still easier than the billions spent on new R&D.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:05PM
Not that you're wrong or anything, but I assumed he was selling cheap Android phones with Apple logos on them, and calling them iPhones.
That was a thing when iPhones first came out.
A friend of mine bought one back from China. It looked quite a lot like an iPhone (version 3 maybe?) if you squinted, but ran some awful feature phone OS that did not really work properly.
He was well aware of what he was buying, but as it cost something like $40 it was a sort of curiosity rather than a ripoff.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 31 2019, @04:14PM
The cost was within an order of magnitude of the price of the hardware? That's a big hint.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @05:08PM (2 children)
We throw nickel-and-dime criminals into the slammers, but the bankers incurring billions/trillions? Oh well, that's different, isn't it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Wednesday July 31 2019, @05:55PM
They own and run the system. Trump, congress, etc., are all just a show to keep the sheeple busy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:36AM
Too-big-to-fail baby.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31 2019, @05:09PM
Meanwhile khazar jew banks got no prison time for selling fake financial products to the unsuspecting investors. Causing asset bubbles and then exploiting the resulting chaos.
Imagine a jew selling the same fake products (like most of their inventory). Would that khazar jewish rat be getting prison time? Now there isn't one jew selling fake stuff. There are _many_.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by darkfeline on Wednesday July 31 2019, @08:16PM
I think the death of a religious language makes a fitting tombstone for the fragmentation of languages supposedly instigated by God.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @01:17AM
After reading TFS, I'm hearing goats.
Montes v. City of Yakima: https://www.aclu-wa.org/cases/montes-v-city-yakima-0 [aclu-wa.org]