GuildMaster Pleads Guilty to Importing Chinese Subsidiary's Lamps With Counterfeit Safety Cert Labels
Missouri-based importer GuildMaster pleaded guilty July 15 in the Western Missouri U.S. District Court to trafficking in goods with counterfeit marks, after importing thousands of lamps from a manufacturer in China that bore fake safety certification labels. GuildMaster said it wasn’t directly involved, admitting only that its wholly-owned subsidiary was aware of the scheme. The company will be placed on five years of probation and will forfeit the seized lamps. CBP won’t seek penalties, but will lay claim to a $43,786 bond to cover its expenses.
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The lamps imported by GuildMaster had been labeled in China as certified by Underwriters Laboratories (UL), but no samples had ever been sent to UL for testing. Chinese company Dongguan Yangming Hardware Crafts Limited manufactured the lamps and affixed the counterfeit label. GuildMaster had owned Dongguan Yangming through another Chinese subsidiary, Meihao Times Trading Co., which itself was owned by a Hong Kong-based subsidiary of Guildmaster’s Westway Enterprises. According to the plea agreement, Westway employees knew that the UL labels were being put on the lamps without going through the UL certification process. The plea agreement said GuildMaster was liable for the actions of its wholly-owned subsidiaries, including Westway.
The investigation led to the seizure of 5,018 lamps destined from China to GuildMaster’s facility, representing a substantial portion of the total of 5,782 GuildMaster lamps CBP inspected. The other 567 lamps had genuine but unauthorized UL labels. Before the seizures took place, GuildMaster did not inspect lamps it imported from China to make sure UL certification marks were authentic, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Email ITTNews@warren-news.com for a copy of the plea agreement.