Five Members of Counterfeit Goods and Money Laundering Conspiracy Plead Guilty
Five members of an "international counterfeit goods conspiracy" pleaded guilty to their involvement in importation of counterfeit goods and money laundering, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office of New Jersey. According to court documents, the conspirators imported over 35 containers of counterfeit goods from August 2008 through February 2012. The imports had a total retail value of over $300 million and included cigarettes, handbags and sneakers, said U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman. The conspirators had used a corporation to bring the goods through the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal, using fraudulent customs paperwork that “falsely declared the goods within the containers.”
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Fishman said that corporation was actually a front company “set up by law enforcement to act as an importer.” Undercover agents at the company “purported to have connections at the port, which allowed them to obtain containers that were on hold, get them released and pass them through to the conspirators.” Several conspirators paid the agents over $900,000 for these “services,” court documents indicated. Dozens of recorded phone calls and in-person meetings with said conspirators were used in the investigation, along with court-authorized wiretaps of phones and electronic communications, Fishman said.
Other conspirators managed distribution of the imported products upon arrival in the U.S., while some “acted as wholesalers for the counterfeit goods” and supplied U.S. retailers. Others like Ning Guo from the People’s Republic of China engaged in money laundering “to disguise and conceal the source of what they believed to be the profits of certain unlawful activity, moving this money through banks in the United States, China and elsewhere.”
Fishman said Guo, along with Yi Jian Chen and Hui Huang of Brooklyn, pleaded guilty Aug. 16 to charges of conspiracy to traffic counterfeit goods. Jian Zhi Mo of Flushing, N.Y., and Yuan Feng Lai of New York City, also pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods on Aug. 12, Fishman said. Sentencing for all five is scheduled for Nov. 25, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.