Byungsu Kim, a South Korean national extradited to the U.S. from South Africa, pleaded guilty to attempting to illegally export Dudleya succulent plants, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California said. Kim pulled the plants, worth more than $600,000, from the ground at various state parks in Northern California and attempted to ship them to Asia. Kim carried out the scheme with two co-defendants: Bong Jun Kim, who served a four-month prison sentence, and Youngin Back, who remains a fugitive.
Afework Bereket, former employee of Swedish telecommunications giant Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson and dual citizen of Ethiopia and Sweden, was indicted for his alleged role in a bribery scheme to pay off government officials in Djibouti, the Department of Justice said Sept. 8. Bereket allegedly engaged in the scheme from 2010 to 2014 in which he served as Ericsson's account manager for the Horn of Africa. He purportedly bribed two high-level officials in the small African nation's executive branch and one at its state-owned telecommunications company to win a contract valued at around $24 million. The scheme involved Bereket and others allegedly leading an Ericsson subsidiary to enter into a fraudulent contract with a consulting company that then signed off on fake invoices to hide the bribe payments, DOJ said. The bribe payments were routed through bank accounts in the U.S. to hide the funds, it said.
A district court judge in Massachusetts sentenced Chinese national Shuren Qin to two years in prison for exporting hydrophones with anti-submarine applications to a Chinese military university on the Commerce Department's Entity List, in a Sept. 1 sentencing memorandum. Judge Denise Casper carried out the sentencing and also ruled that Qin will be placed on supervised release for two years following his prison sentence and will pay a fine of $20,000 (United States v. Shuren Qin, D.C. Mass. #18-10205).
Global Plywood and Lumber Trading LLC was sentenced to pay $200,000 in restitution to Peru's Ministry of Environment after pleading guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Department of Justice said. The company admitted to importing illegally sourced timber from the Peruvian Amazon, in violation of the Lacey Act. The court also ordered the company to pay a $5,000 fine. In 2015, Global Plywood bought around 1,135 cubic meters of hardwood blanks from three suppliers in Peru, which then arrived at the Port of Houston, where it was seized by CBP (see 1606090042). In its guilty plea, Global Plywood admitted not obtaining or reviewing relevant harvest permits or Forest Travel Guides from SIGO, an open-source website run by the Peruvian government; failing to check SIGO for irregularities connected with its purchased timber; and relying on suppliers' statements without conducting due diligence, DOJ said. Global Plywood dissolved in 2017, forfeiting the illegal timber after civil action commenced.
Rashad Sargeant, resident of College Park, Georgia, and David Johnson of Belleville, Illinois, pleaded guilty on Sept. 2 to illegally exporting firearms to Barbados, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia said. The pair sent at least 30 guns to Barbados after destroying the firearms' serial numbers and packing them in false compartments in boxes, the U.S. Attorney said. According to court documents, Johnson recruited Shunquez Stephens and others to buy the guns from federally licensed dealers and make false statements to the dealers by pledging that they were being bought for themselves. Sargeant and Johnson then mailed the guns to Barbados through carriers such as UPS, FedEx and DHL, using fake identifications, the release said.
Maryland residents Wilson Nuyila Tita of Owings Mills, Eric Fru Nji of Fort Washington and Wilson Che Fonguh of Bowie were charged Aug. 27 in a federal indictment at the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland with conspiracty to violate the Arms Export Control Act and the Export Reform Control Act, the Department of Justice said. The three allegedly shipped firearms and ammunition from the U.S. to Nigeria, violating export restrictions.
A Romanian bank and its U.S. parent company were fined about $860,000 by the Office of Foreign Assets Control for violating U.S. sanctions against Iran and Syria, OFAC said in an enforcement notice. Romania-based First Bank SA processed nearly 100 transactions worth about $3.5 million through U.S. banks on behalf of sanctioned parties, the notice said. The bank continued to process transactions for Iranian customers after it was acquired by U.S.-based JC Flowers in 2018.
A federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas returned a seven-count indictment against 101 individuals in a cellphone trafficking scheme, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Texas said Aug. 26 in a news release. Per the superseding indictment, the individuals stole personal electronics via armed robbery or fraud schemes in North Texas then shipped them overseas for sale. The personal electronics include cellphones, tablets, laptops and smart watches. The indictment alleges that the accused parties coordinated a series of armed robberies, as many as 23, in AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon retail cellphone stores around Dallas. The losses from the robberies is estimated at around $500,000.
A federal jury found six companies guilty of a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. through a “wire-and-customs” fraud scheme in which $1.8 billion in antidumping and countervailing duties were avoided on aluminum extrusions imported to the U.S. from China, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District 0f California said Aug. 23. Disguising the extrusions as “pallets,” the goods were shipped to the U.S. and sold to fraudulently inflate a Chinese company's revenues, the Department of Justice said. Litigation over the aluminum pallets has been going on in multiple venues (see 2011090041).
Singapore Customs arrested three men Aug. 18, seizing more than 4,700 cartons of cigarettes for which duties had not been paid, the customs agency said Aug. 23. Customs initially observed boxes suspected of having the duty-unpaid cigarettes, then inspected a Chinese national's two vehicles, finding 1,700 cartons of the illegally shipped cigarettes and arrested the driver. Singapore Customs officers also found 2,996 cartons and 40 packets of duty-unpaid cigarettes in a van driven by a Singaporean national with a Malaysian man in the passenger seat. The officers then inspected the Singaporean man's home, where an additional 64 cartons and 37 packets of cigarettes were seized, Singapore Customs said. Duties and taxes evaded totaled approximately $400,000 and $32,000 (in Singapore dollars), respectively, it said.