Chinese Importer to Serve 12 Months, Pay $ 20K for Counterfeit Perfume
On December 20, 2011, the Justice Department announced that Shaoxiong Zhou, a Chinese perfume importer, was sentenced to 12 months in prison and ordered to pay $20,000 in restitution for trafficking in counterfeit perfume.
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Shipped Cargo Container of Counterfeit Perfume to NY Facility
Zhou pleaded guilty to trafficking in counterfeit goods in August 2011. Zhou admitted that he offered to supply counterfeit perfume to prospective buyers at a Las Vegas trade show in August 2010. He also admitted that he shipped a cargo container of counterfeit perfume to a facility in Staten Island, N.Y., in January 2011.
That shipment, which was seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection upon arrival in the U.S., was found to contain approximately 37,000 units of perfume bearing counterfeit marks and made to resemble fragrance products from several well-known brands, including Lacoste, Polo Black and Armani Code.
Co-Defendant Was Sentenced to 9 Months, also Ordered to Pay $20K
Zhou and codefendant Shaoxia Huang were arrested in March 2011. Huang also pleaded guilty in August 2011 to trafficking in counterfeit goods and was sentenced in December 2011 to nine months in prison and was ordered to pay $20,000 in restitution.
(See ITT's Online Archives 11080824 for summary of Zhou and Huang's August 2011 guilty pleas.)