5 Years In Prison For Selling Fake Cisco Gear

angry tapir writes "A Virginia woman was sentenced Friday to five years in prison for leading a 'sophisticated' conspiracy to import and sell counterfeit Cisco Systems networking equipment. In addition to the prison time, Judge Gerald Bruce Lee of U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia also ordered Chun-Yu Zhao, 43, of Chantilly, Virginia, to pay US$2.7 million restitution and a $17,500 fine."

Comments

speculating about the real purpose

[Walt Dismal]

I'm wondering whether there was a deeper purpose to importing counterfeited equipment. If such could be successfully sold into government operations, it could then be used for backdoors if it had been outfitted with modified ICs designed to support that. That the importer was in Virginia normally would not be too important, but Virginia and Maryland being prime areas for government installations makes it more suspicious, if they were going to pose as a local supplier. Then, by cutting their price on bids below normal competitors, they could steer their equipment into specific departments.

I think they ought to open up some of those counterfeits, spend some money de-capping some chips, and take a good look at what's really in them.

Re:speculating about the real purpose

[hairyfeet]

Dude industrial espionage between governments is as old as time. My grandfather was stationed in Germany and he used to laugh that if the Soviets wanted to take out the German bases all they'd have to do is send one plane at a time as they were ordered not to shoot at single Soviet planes. Why? Because we had a bounty on any Soviet air tech and we wanted to make sure the pilots knew they could just fly across the border and they'd be safe (and well paid). The Russians got us as well, they paid the Chinese for a dud Sidewinder that got stuck in one of their planes and jumped 10 years on their missile tech. According to the Wiki the copy they made of the sidewinder was so perfect you could mix and match parts and it would work perfectly.

The Israelis stole the plans for the Mirage from the French, the Chinese paid dirt farmers to dig up pieces of our crashed F117 so they could save years in research on stealth tech. It isn't like they are wanting to go to war with us, they are wanting to save billions in R&D. If they could get those routers into the right areas they could have all our best tech before it even rolls out of prototype stage. think about how much money that would save them in research!