A Saudi man has been jailed for four years in the US, for selling counterfeit Cisco networking equipment to the US Marine Corps, Arab News reports.
Ehab Ali Ashoor was found guilty of supplying fake Cisco gigabit interface converters, (GBICs) through his company, CDS Federal Inc, to fulfill a contract with the US Marines. The GBICs had been intended for use at a Marine base near Fallujah in Iraq, but US customs offices identified them as inferior fakes.
Ashoor, who is resident in the US, supplied 200 of the GBICs to the Marine Corps, charging $119,000 for them, but it was discovered that the items were actually counterfeits, sourced from an eBay vendor in Hong Kong for less that $25 per GBIC.
The case was part of an operation, codenamed Network Raider, to clamp down on the supply of counterfeit or poor quality computer supplies to US military and federal agencies, which has netted over $143 million worth of fake Cisco equipment in over 700 seizures, resulting in 30 convictions.