An Italian national named Rosario La Marca has been sentenced to 37 months in prison by a Newark, New Jersey judge for smuggling fake Electronics such as iPhones, iPads, and iPods from china into the United States. The 54-year-old who resided in Naples, Italy had pleaded guilty on February 22 to charges of trafficking and smuggling fake goods into the United States as well as laundering money. The judge also sentenced him to one year of supervised release.
How Rosario committed the crimes
Rosario had admitted in February this year that from July 2009 to February 2014, he and five others conspired to smuggle more than 40,000 electronic devices and accessories from China into the United States.
The electronics bared Sony and Apple trademarks and were estimated to be worth $150 million. The devices were labeled as genuine after being passed through U.S customs and were then sent to conspirators inside the U.S.
Proceeds from sales of the devices were then sent to Rosario's accounts in New Jersey and Florida and multiple deposits of less than $10,000 were made into the accounts to avoid bank reporting requirements. Some of the funds were also sent to conspirators in Italy. According to his court admissions, Rosario wired more than $1.1 million to Hong Kong as payment for the counterfeit products.
The sale of fake products
On July 20, 2017, a leading intellectual property law news website named IPWatchdog published an article on the growing problem of counterfeit goods.
The article stated that counterfeit goods had grown more than 80 percent between 2008 and 2013. The International Criminal Court Governmental also published a report last year that showed that the total value of counterfeit goods would be worth more than $1.9 trillion by 2022.
In October 2016, Apple sued Mobile Star LLC for selling fake power adapters and cables on Groupon and Amazon.
Apple also discovered that 90 percent of chargers sold on the two sites were fake. Fake iPhone 8's have also hit the mobile phone market according to Asian news website The Sun Daily. According to the website, fake iPhones are being sold for $100 each.
People recently arrested for selling fake products
Two owners of Jewelry stores were detained in March for selling counterfeit jewelry in West Miami.
$31 million worth of fake jewelry items were confiscated.
Five people were also arrested last year for selling fake designer goods in North Island. Police seized $1.5 million worth of counterfeit goods. They said that despite original design products costing $21,000, fake substitutes that looked similar were being sold for only a few hundred dollars by one of the traders.
Late last year, police seized more than 9,000 fake Samsung and Apple products worth millions from a Brooklyn electronics trader.
