Muhammad Uzair Khalid of Garland, Texas, pleaded guilty Nov. 23 to one count of trafficking in counterfeit goods, for illegally importing counterfeit vaping products from China, the Department of Justice said. The trafficked goods include counterfeit vaping atomizers, labels, boxes and bags for vaping-related products. Uzair admitted to regularly communicating with Chinese manufacturers about the counterfeit vaping products, including on methods to imitate the branding and logos of the well-known U.S. vape companies, DOJ said. The counterfeit goods were seized during a 2019 search of Uzair's storefront by ICE's Homeland Security Investigations as part of a broader initiative by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FDA and state and local health departments to counter lung-related diseases associated with unregulated vaping products.

MC Tubular Products, a subsidiary of import/export management firm Metal One Holdings America, is charged with failing to comply with a federal summons, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas said. Metal One Holdings America is also charged in the case. MC Tubular, which supplies industrial pipe products to the oil and gas industry, allegedly misrepresented the value of its imports to CBP to avoid paying over $10 million in antidumping duties on metal pipe imported from Japan, the attorney's office said. CBP issued a summons compelling the companies to hand over the documents, which will apparently show whether misrepresentations were made.

Dali Bagrou, of Alpharetta, Georgia, and owner of World Mining and Oil Supply, was sentenced to 51 months in prison accompanied by three years of supervised release for his role in a scheme to evade U.S. national security laws, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia said. World Mining was sentenced to five years' probation.

Former Broadcom engineer Peter Kisang Kim was indicted by a federal grand jury for stealing company trade secrets, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California said. Kim, a resident of Ben Lomond, California, worked as a principal design engineer at Broadcom for two years and allegedly stole trade secrets on chips used in high-volume data centers, the U.S. Attorney's office said. The chips were stored in nonpublic document repositories restricted to Broadcom employees. Ten days after leaving the San Jose, California-based company, Kim started working for a China-based startup focusing on chip design and the market for networking chips, the indictment said. Kim allegedly used the Broadcom trade secrets on a newly issued company laptop. Kim is charged with 18 counts of trade secret theft and faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release for each count.

Jean Patrice Delia, a former General Electric Company engineer and a resident of Montreal, Canada, was sentenced Nov. 10 to 24 months in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets from GE, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York said. Delia, along with his co-defendant and partner Miguel Sernas -- a resident and citizen of Mexico, admitted to conspiring to compete against GE using its own trade secrets. Delia and Sernas operated at ThermoGen Power Services and used the stolen trade secrets that were taken from when Delia worked at GE from 2001 through 2012. Delia was also ordered to pay $1.4 million in restitution. Sernas was sentenced in 2019 to 12 months in jail and ordered to also pay $1.4 million in restitution.

Herdade Lokua and Jospin Mujangi, both of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, were arrested and indicted for trafficking elephant ivory and white rhinoceros horn from the Congo to Seattle, the Department of Justice said. The pair allegedly worked with a middleman to bring in four packages that contained the ivory and rhinoceros horn. All four were sent via air freight, with three arriving in August and September 2020, and the remaining one in May 2021. Lokua and Mujangi also conspired to send large packages via ocean freight. The shipments in this scheme allegedly included elephant ivory, pangolin scales and rhinoceros horns. The pair cut the tusks and horn into smaller pieces that were painted black to avoid detection. The parts were mixed with ebony wood and declared as "wood" with values of $50-$60, DOJ said. The duo also allegedly paid bribes to local authorities in Kinshasa, the city where they live, to get the goods out of the Congo. Lokua and Mujangi now stand accused of conspiracy, money laundering, smuggling and Lacey Act violations, facing a maximum of 20 years in prison for the smuggling and money laundering charges and five years for the Lacey Act and conspiracy violations.

Yanjun Xu, a Chinese national and intelligence officer, was convicted by jury of conspiring and attempting to carry out economic espionage and trade secret theft, the Department of Justice said Nov. 5. Xu served as the deputy division director of the Sixth Bureau of the Jiangsu Province Ministry of State Security, and is the first Chinese intelligence officer to be extradited to the U.S. to stand trial, DOJ said. Xu faces two counts of attempting to commit economic espionage, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $5 million fine, along with one count of conspiracy to commit trade secret theft and two counts of attempted trade secret theft, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Amid Magerramov, an Estonian national, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for conspiring to import large quantities of carfentanil and fentanyl into the U.S., after pleading guilty to the charges in May, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said. Between October 2017 and August 2018, Magerramov conspired to ship the drugs into the U.S., also participating in a series of recorded meetings with an individual he believed to be affiliated with an international drug trafficking organization but who was actually a confidential source for the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Attorney's office said. Magerramov prepared and shipped more than 5 kilograms of substances that contained the powerful opioid carfentanil for importation into the U.S. Along with his prison sentence, Magerramov was ordered to forfeit $38,500, the U.S. Attorney said.

Chinese appliance manufacturer Gree Electric Appliances Inc. and two of its subsidiaries pleaded guilty to failing to tell the Consumer Product Safety Commission that millions of its dehumidifiers it sold to U.S. customers were defective and could catch fire, the Department of Justice said. Resolving the first corporate criminal enforcement actions ever brought under the Consumer Product Safety Act, Gree entered into a deferred prosecution agreement, agreeing to pay a total penalty of $91 million and provide restitution for any uncompensated victims of fires caused by the dehumidifiers.

Obaidullah Syed, a Chicago-based technology executive, pleaded guilty to illegally exporting computer equipment to a nuclear research agency owned by the Pakistani government, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois said. Syed owned Business System International USA, based in Chicago, along with Business System International stationed in Pakistan, both of which produce high-performance computing platforms, servers and software application solutions. From 2006 to 2015, Syed conspired with other BSI employees in Pakistan to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by shipping computer equipment to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission without obtaining prior authorization from the Commerce Department, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. The PAEC is a government agency responsible for designing and testing explosives and nuclear weapons parts, and was designated by the U.S. as an entity that could pose a national security threat, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Syed and his co-conspirators lied to U.S.-based computer manufacturers that his shipments were headed to Pakistani universities or Syed's other businesses, Syed admitted. BSI Pvt. Ltd. was also charged as a corporate defendant.