Chinese Apple counterfeiter pleads guilty to peddling fake iPhones and iPads in the US

Jianhua “Jeff” Li, a 43-year-old Chinese national World Health Organization lived within the United States on a student visa, pled guilty nowadays to collaborating in an exceedingly counterfeiting operation out of China that concerned marketing pretend iPhones and iPads to customers within the u.  s.. The case, headed up independent agency and prosecuted by the executive department, has been in progress since 2015, once Li was charged and brought into custody.

For 5 years beginning in 2009, Li — aboard conspirators Andreina Becerra, Roberto Volpe, Rosario LaMarca — helped import quite forty,000 merchandise and accessories from China into the United States, together with each iPhones and iPads, aboard packaging, labels, and alternative documents containing cast Apple logos and emblems. The operation was massive in scale, with Li in person receiving $1.1 million in sales revenues from United States customers thinking they were shopping for legitimate Apple merchandise.

It’s unclear what quantity Li himself, his family in China, or his partners within the theme made of the counterfeiting operation. It’s conjointly unclear simply however huge the operation was at its peak or whether or not it had ties to large-scale counterfeiting producing operations in China, wherever Apple merchandise area unit in high demand and wherever subtle natural philosophy producing plants typically turn out pretend merchandise. Accounts for Li’s theme were unbroken in Sunshine State and New Jersey, wherever income were 1st deposited before being transferred to Italia and so onward to alternative sources round the globe to mask their origin, in keeping with the Justice Department.

Li was charged with and pled guilty to at least one count of conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit merchandise and labels and to import merchandise into the United States, also united count of trafficking in counterfeit merchandise. His sentencing is ready for might thirtieth. LaMarca, another member of the conspiracy, was the primary to be sentenced last year in Gregorian calendar month, receiving a jail term of thirty seven months. each Becerra and Volpe, Li’s alternative conspirators, area unit still awaiting sentencing.