Cisco counterfeiter receives heavy sentence

Chun-Yu Zhao is stripped of US citizenship, ordered to pay back millions to Cisco and thrown in jail

A woman in the US has been jailed after being caught importing and selling counterfeit Cisco equipment.

Chun-Yu Zhao, 43, from Virginia, was ordered to also pay Cisco $2.7m in ‘restitution’ and a $17,500 fine after receiving her 60-month prison sentence.

After her prison term is up, Zhao has been ordered by US District Court Judge Gerald Bruce Lee to serve three years of supervised release.

She has also been stripped of her US citizenship and ordered to forfeit her assets to the US.

Assets includes four homes in Maryland and northern Virginia, and three condos in Chantilly, worth a total of $2.6m, a Porsche Boxster, Porsche Cayenne and Mercedes sedan, and seven bank accounts containing more than $1.6m.

The case was investigated by US Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland Security Investigations.

A three-week trial took place in May, where a federal jury convicted Zhao of 16 felony counts, including conspiracy to commit importation fraud and to deal in counterfeit goods, importation fraud, dealing in counterfeit goods, obtaining citizenship by fraud, making false statements and money laundering.

It was revealed that Zhao and her co-conspirators in China used counterfeit labels and packaging to mislead customers that they were purchasing genuine Cisco products.