- Five members of the same family residing in Idaho (United States) have just been sentenced to 51.9 million dollars in fines and seizures in addition to prison sentences
- They had been reselling counterfeit iPhones and Samsung smartphones on eBay and Amazon for years
- The products came from Hong Kong, then were repackaged in the State to perfect the scam
Five members of the same family were convicted in late May in an Idaho state court of a scam involving the possession and resale of counterfeit and contraband goods – which collectively cost them more than 50 million dollars in fines and seizures (about the same in euros), in addition to prison sentences.
It must be said that the scam has allowed the defendants for years to generate millions of dollars by reselling fake iPhones and Samsung smartphones imported from China on Amazon and eBay. The counterfeit goods were all imported en masse from Honk Kong. Once they arrived in the United States, they were repackaged before being offered for sale as real genuine devices on eBay and Amazon.
The scam had made them millions, they lost everything
One might think that the police were able to trace the trail quite easily, but in reality the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the IRS-Criminal Investigation, the US Postal Inspection Service and the US Marshals Service, as well as local partners had to collaborate for many months to gather all the evidence that led to this conviction.
All the defendants were sentenced at the end of the trial to prison terms, fines and seizures. The one who must probably look the grayest is Pavel Babichenko, the accused who received the heaviest sentence. In one seizure justice recovered more than 33 million dollars. That didn’t stop him from having to pay an additional $21,000 fine – he was obviously considered the mastermind of the operation.
The rest of the sum is the result of various fines and seizures relating to other members of the family, in particular a certain Piotr Babichenko, who received a spectacular fine of 3.3 million dollars, Timofey Babichenko who had to Pauer 9.2 million dollars, David Bibikov, ordered to pay 4.7 million dollars or Mikhail Iyerusalimets ordered to pay nearly 1 million dollars.
In addition to this, the family members were sentenced to various prison terms, which ranged between 4 and 6 years for most family members. And it might not end there – they might indeed have to reimburse the brands for legal costs. For their part, unable to decently appeal, the defendants tried to launch a petition on Change.org to demand their release.
In particular, they claim to face real “persecution” from the American judicial system. “because of their faith (Christian Orthodox) and their ethnicity (Russian)”. The petition in question has so far reached 1,764 signatures, far from the first level of 2,500.
