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Man Pleads Guilty To Selling Fake Chips To US Navy
itwbennett writes "Neil Felahy of Newport Coast, California, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and counterfeit-goods trafficking for his role in a chip-counterfeiting scam. Felahy, along with his wife and her brother, operated several microchip brokerage companies under a variety of names, including MVP Micro, Red Hat Distributors, Force-One Electronics and Pentagon Components. 'They would buy counterfeit chips from China or else take legitimate chips, sand off the brand markings and melt the plastic casings with acid to make them appear to be of higher quality or a different brand,' the US Department of Justice said in a press release. The chips were then sold to Naval Sea Systems Command, the Washington, DC group responsible for maintaining the US Navy's ships and systems, as well as to an unnamed vacuum-cleaner manufacturer in the Midwest."
That sucks ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'm imagining someone selling the Navy fake ships.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
The chips were then sold to Naval Sea Systems Command, the Washington, D.C., group responsible for maintaining the US Navy's ships and systems, as well as an unnamed vacuum-cleaner manufacturer in the Midwest.
Has our Navy gone from suck to blow?
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/article03/
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort"
Ripping them off isn't treason.
You can get away with fraud when dealing with the government. It's the Vacuum company that got them in trouble. The government would have probably went on for a few more years buying them if it wasn't for these people getting greedy and going after the lucrative vacuum market.
-EL
Chips? Chips!?
Common, this is Slashdot. Chips? The technical jargon in the summary is horribly confusing.
For clarity, could we please use a more generic term, such as 'computer thingamajiggy?'
whats wrong with sony, samsung, or intel. I'm sure they could produce chips for government related applications, not some shady business no ones heard of before.
Are you familiar with efforts to foster American small businesses in the United States by the government (note this is nothing specific to Obama)? If you want to get into government contracts, I suggest you start a small business owned by a woman who is a minority. You'd be amazed at how easily you can land contracts and subcontracts as the government and big contractors strive to make quotas.
My work here is dung.
Because it was the free market and private enterprise that was doing the scamming?
And if they are willing to pull this on the gov't then it really doesn't bode well for the rest of us peons.
In other words the right to regulate chip counterfeiting belongs to your local State government, until you expand the Constitution with an amendment
Wrong. This is actually a proper use of the Interstate Commerce Clause. Now arresting some poor bastard for growing pot for his own personal use on the other hand.......
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Isn't there some confusion here? This is the free market at work; if it wasn't, the Navy would have their own fabs and employ wafer process techs as well as sailors and airplane mechanics. This is outside the brief of the government, especially the Navy, hence the government buying the fake chips from a private contractor. They didn't do enough due diligence and got burned -- isn't that what's supposed to happen when there's an information imbalance in a market?
HOW does a man and his family sell ANYTHING to the Navy? Is the Navy getting their parts from eBay or Craig's List?
I don't know. Knowing selling the Navy computer components you KNOW would fail, to me, would fall into "giving aid to the enemy". We could argue intention/motivation, but a crime is a crime, regardless what you meant.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I suggest you start a small business owned by a woman who is a minority.
Why is it (properly, IMHO) called racism and/or sexism if someone gives favoritism to a white male but doing the inverse is just fine and dandy?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The military spends billions of dollars and has the money to buy directly from known, reputable firms like AMD, Siemens, Mitsubishi, NEC, Toshiba, etc. Doing so would ensure the quality of the electronic components.
Why is the military dealing with relatively unknown distributors of suspicious origin? This story is fishy.
The military probably did not intend to use anything "purchased" from unknown distributors. This "purchase", from the onset, was intended to be a honey pot attracting unscrupulous businesses connected to hostile governments like Beijing. The purchased components were never intended to be used. The aim was to find such unscrupulous businesses, to determine the network that Beijing has established in the USA, and to shutdown American traitors who participate in such a network.
Government procurement is a bureaucratic mess, and a royal pain in the ass for both buyers and sellers. Because of this (and because of rules preferring "small" and "minority-owned" businesses), it is very common for government entities to buy though a middle man that knows how their procurement systems work, rather than getting product directly from a manufacturer, especially for low-cost COTS products.
Fuck the Navy, you mean my vacuum cleaner might have sub-standard chips in it?! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
apparently the fake chips are made with less than 50% potato, have a weird taste and are sold in a can.
What "enemy"?
Selling fake/incorrect components should be prosecuted as sabotage, because defective components can degrade vital systems and cause casualties.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Why is it (properly, IMHO) called racism and/or sexism if someone gives favoritism to a white male but doing the inverse is just fine and dandy?
2 generations ago: negros were riding on the back of the bus (1949)
3 generations ago: women hadn't yet been given the right to vote (1919)
The short version is: because we say so.
The full version might have something to do with the long and storied
history of racism, sexism, and exploitation throughout human history.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The government is not at fault. The owner of those businesses is. The government looked for a seller within our free market, and that seller conspired to fool the government.
If anything, this says more negative about the free market, and the willingness of people to do illegal things out of selfish greed.
The government is the people. It is for the people, by the people. If the government is so "fucked up" as you say it is, than perhaps its just a reflection of our citizens.
We need to be BETTER PEOPLE for ourselves, and our fellow Americans.
Old destroyer man here. Nature and the elements are one enemy that sailors battle every day. Not to mention Al Queda and assorted terrorists such as the ones who attacked the USS Cole. Pointing out that Iran is already geared up for war in the Strait of Hormuz, The Persian Guf, and the Sea of Oman is probably redundant.
No, treason is probably not an appropriate charge against these idiots, but I felt it necessary to point out that the US Navy is never at "peace". There are always operations taking place in which men's lives are in peril. Some of the most dangerous things pulled of by destroyers and small craft never make the news at all. Shipboard equipment is tested to it's limits daily, and lives depend on that equipment operating properly.
Care to step aboard an aircraft carrier? During flight operations, no matter how peaceful, there is more danger in one 24 hour day than most people can imagine.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
First of all, the charge of treason is obviously inappropriate. Fraud it is.
But to your other point, using a low-spec chip can certainly lead to lower reliability. What if the ersatz chip has less forgiving temperature than the real thing? What if the software running on it assumes it can respond within 50us to an external input, but because the ersatz chip is running at a lower clock speed, the response time is 100us? That could be the difference between your anti-ship-killer-missile cannon hitting the target and you surviving, or it missing and you dying.
This is serious.
I don't think this is an issue of Due Diligence - blame the goverment blah blah blah - it's an issue of THEY LIED. They stated the chips were one thing / one grade and turned out they were another grade entirely.
It's reasonable to expect regular consumers in the marketplace to perform due diligence but when a person claims the product is the product and it appears that way then the person has performed due deligence. Requiring the person to inspect fab plants and everything else for every manufacturer is not due diligence - it's a hassle.
Let's get out of this blame the government mantra - the politico talking heads are having enough fun as it is. This is a criminal issue for which the company should be nailed pretty harshly. The goverment should get it's retribution through whatever means are most expedient.
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
What were white men doing two or three generations ago?
While some of them were probably benefiting greatly from institutionalized sexism and racism, others were part of the poor, downtrodden masses.
Even today, there are places that are very white and very poor, where there is little opportunity, and crime and poverty runs rampant.
So why do we assume all white men don't need any additional help?
Is it because of the color of their skin and their gender?
They can't, unless certain, very specific criteria are met.
And even if they are, it's usually cheaper to have purchased the data rights to an end of line product, and turn around and find another vendor who will make them to those specs.
The US Military doesn't own large scale fabrication plants to "just make" whatever they need. And even if they did, Congress wouldn't let them use them, because it would be taking money away from US corporations.
Let me give an example: There's a base that has SEABEE units. Naval Construction Battalions (CB -> SeaBee). It is not unknown that such a navy base might need, at some point, a new pier. This is the sort of thing that, when the SeaBees are sent overseas, that they build. But they can't do this at the base, even if they label it a "training exercise", because statutorally, the money has to go to contracted construction companies.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
What about that guy that sold them the fake "Mission Accomplished" banner for their aircraft carrier?
In 2006-2007 it was a problem to get many parts in the reasonable quality - flash, op-amps, multiplexors.
So we bought a few reels from the second-hand distributor.
As a result flash marked as 32Mb was 2Mb inside, op-amps weren't up to the specs (manufacturer confirm that they were made of written-off dyes), multiplexors were sold as a particular brand with advanced features while indeed were jelly beans for $0.10 a piece.
Thankfully we were able to rework boards before products hit the consumer market.
That was a good lesson for us to never use Chinese distributors for parts