BOSTON - An Andover man was sentenced yesterday for selling thousands of counterfeit electronics out of his home using eBay and on his own website.
Ahmad Raad, 56, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole to four years of probation, the first six months of which must be served in home confinement with electronic monitoring, $100,000 in restitution to the corporate victims, and individual restitution to all identified individual victims. In November 2012, Raad pleaded guilty to selling counterfeit goods and mail fraud.
Between 2007 and 2011, Raad sold a variety of electronic merchandise, including batteries, chargers and memory sticks, under the name “eMartCentral" using eBay, or the website “www.emartcentral.com." Raad purchased the merchandise that he sold directly from China. The merchandise bore a variety of brand names and trademarks, including those of Sony, SanDisk, Olympus, and Kingston. But much of this merchandise was not made by these companies or by companies authorized to use the companies’ names or marks. In some instances, Raad received merchandise from China that did not bear any product labels, and separately received sheets of Sony and SanDisk labels which he affixed to the merchandise and sold. During the four year period, Raad sold thousands of pieces of counterfeit merchandise in this manner.
United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz; Bruce M. Foucat, Special Agent in Charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations in Boston; and Kevin Niland, Inspector in Charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, made the announcement today. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy Harman Burkart of Ortiz’s Cybercrime Unit.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
