The U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina last week sentenced Alan Nordman, a former CBP employee and North Carolina resident, to one year of probation for illegally selling a customs declaration form signed by a celebrity, Michael Jackson. Judge Kenneth Bell penned the order, which also said that Nordman shall forfeit his interest in the customs form. The North Carolina man pleaded guilty in November to one count of conveyance of a government record for auctioning the form on eBay, where it sold for $795 in 2022.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 8 dismissed importer Rimco's challenge of antidumping and countervailing duties on its steel wheel entries, for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.
Paulo Perez-Mendoza of Stockton, California, was charged March 28 with conspiracy to "receive and sell smuggled pesticides" into the U.S., the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California announced.
The U.S. brought a customs penalty suit against importer E-Dong U.S.A. for failure to pay federal excise tax on entries of soju bottles from South Korea. Filing a complaint March 28 at the Court of International Trade, the government said that the company entered the soju, a Korean spirit, via "material or false statement" by failing to reference any of the owed excise tax (U.S. v. E-Dong, U.S.A., CIT # 24-00066).
A consumer filed suit in New York on March 27 alleging that the aluminum foil brand Reynolds, which her complaint called “a staple of Americana,” harmed consumers by falsely advertising that its foil was made in the U.S. (Anaya Washington v. Reynolds Consumer Products LLC, S.D.N.Y. # 24-02327).
Mosaic tile importer Akua Mosaics and its president, Kenneth Fleming, pleaded guilty on March 19 to conspiring to smuggle Chinese-made porcelain mosaic tiles into the U.S., the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Puerto Rico announced.
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington dismissed a lawsuit from clothing company Smart Apparel (U.S.) that accused Nordstrom of breaching a contract when it canceled orders from Smart Apparel that were suspected of being made with forced labor (Smart Apparel (U.S.) v. Nordstrom, W.D. Wash. # 23-01754).