Corporations need be careful and exercise due care when establishing their supply chains, said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim while speaking Dec. 14 at the American Bar Association's National Environmental Enforcement Conference's Section on Environment, Energy and Resources. Kim discussed the DOJ's enforcement approach and mentioned the Lacey Act as an example. "If a corporate supply chain originates from a criminally-tainted source, then my division will consider the criminal responsibility of all parts of that supply chain," Kim said. "A corporation seeking credit for cooperation will need to identify all individuals involved in misconduct, including individuals outside the company in a supply chain. ... A corporation would be well advised to protect itself and its investments by exercising due care over its supply chain in light of the prospect of criminal sanction; the potential seizure and forfeiture of illegally-sourced timber, goods, vessels and other equipment; and the unavailability of an innocent owner defense."

The U.S. concluded the forfeiture of two large weapons shipments and one large cache of oil products from Iran following two cases in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Department of Justice announced Dec. 7. In 2019 and 2020, the U.S. Navy seized 171 Iranian surface-to-air missiles and eight anti-tank missiles, along with around 1.1 million barrels of Iranian petroleum products in the Arabian Sea in the largest-ever forfeiture of fuel and weapons shipments from Iran, DOJ said. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps organized the weapons shipments, designated for the Houthi militia in Yemen. The Navy seized the weapons from two vessels during routine maritime security operations, DOJ said. The petroleum products were taken from four foreign-flagged tankers in or around the Arabian Sea en route to Venezuela, DOJ said.

Sang Bum Noh, owner of Los Angeles-based garment wholesaler Ambiance Apparel, was sentenced to 12 months and one day in federal prison for conspiring to undervalue imported garments and skirting millions in import duties, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said Dec. 6. Noh also failed to report millions of dollars in income on tax returns and failed to report large cash transactions, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

The chief financial officer of trucking and logistics company Roadrunner Transportation Systems until 2017, Peter Armbruster, was sentenced to two years in prison "for his role in a complex securities and accounting fraud scheme," the Department of Justice said in a Dec. 1 news release. "Evidence presented at trial showed that Armbruster inflated Roadrunner’s reported income by misrepresenting Roadrunner’s expenses. His actions caused the investing public to lose tens of millions of dollars when Roadrunner eventually announced that it would need to restate its previously filed financial statements, triggering a sharp drop in the company’s stock," DOJ said. "On July 29, following an 11-day trial, a jury convicted Armbruster of four counts of violating federal securities laws, including misleading a public company’s auditors, securities fraud, and keeping false books and records." Armbruster was indicted in 2019 (see 1904040023).

Muhammad Uzair Khalid of Garland, Texas, pleaded guilty Nov. 23 to one count of trafficking in counterfeit goods, for illegally importing counterfeit vaping products from China, the Department of Justice said. The trafficked goods include counterfeit vaping atomizers, labels, boxes and bags for vaping-related products. Uzair admitted to regularly communicating with Chinese manufacturers about the counterfeit vaping products, including on methods to imitate the branding and logos of the well-known U.S. vape companies, DOJ said. The counterfeit goods were seized during a 2019 search of Uzair's storefront by ICE's Homeland Security Investigations as part of a broader initiative by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FDA and state and local health departments to counter lung-related diseases associated with unregulated vaping products.

Dali Bagrou, of Alpharetta, Georgia, and owner of World Mining and Oil Supply, was sentenced to 51 months in prison accompanied by three years of supervised release for his role in a scheme to evade U.S. national security laws, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia said. World Mining was sentenced to five years' probation.

MC Tubular Products, a subsidiary of import/export management firm Metal One Holdings America, is charged with failing to comply with a federal summons, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas said. Metal One Holdings America is also charged in the case. MC Tubular, which supplies industrial pipe products to the oil and gas industry, allegedly misrepresented the value of its imports to CBP to avoid paying over $10 million in antidumping duties on metal pipe imported from Japan, the attorney's office said. CBP issued a summons compelling the companies to hand over the documents, which will apparently show whether misrepresentations were made.

Jean Patrice Delia, a former General Electric Company engineer and a resident of Montreal, Canada, was sentenced Nov. 10 to 24 months in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets from GE, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York said. Delia, along with his co-defendant and partner Miguel Sernas -- a resident and citizen of Mexico, admitted to conspiring to compete against GE using its own trade secrets. Delia and Sernas operated at ThermoGen Power Services and used the stolen trade secrets that were taken from when Delia worked at GE from 2001 through 2012. Delia was also ordered to pay $1.4 million in restitution. Sernas was sentenced in 2019 to 12 months in jail and ordered to also pay $1.4 million in restitution.

Former Broadcom engineer Peter Kisang Kim was indicted by a federal grand jury for stealing company trade secrets, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California said. Kim, a resident of Ben Lomond, California, worked as a principal design engineer at Broadcom for two years and allegedly stole trade secrets on chips used in high-volume data centers, the U.S. Attorney's office said. The chips were stored in nonpublic document repositories restricted to Broadcom employees. Ten days after leaving the San Jose, California-based company, Kim started working for a China-based startup focusing on chip design and the market for networking chips, the indictment said. Kim allegedly used the Broadcom trade secrets on a newly issued company laptop. Kim is charged with 18 counts of trade secret theft and faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release for each count.

Herdade Lokua and Jospin Mujangi, both of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, were arrested and indicted for trafficking elephant ivory and white rhinoceros horn from the Congo to Seattle, the Department of Justice said. The pair allegedly worked with a middleman to bring in four packages that contained the ivory and rhinoceros horn. All four were sent via air freight, with three arriving in August and September 2020, and the remaining one in May 2021. Lokua and Mujangi also conspired to send large packages via ocean freight. The shipments in this scheme allegedly included elephant ivory, pangolin scales and rhinoceros horns. The pair cut the tusks and horn into smaller pieces that were painted black to avoid detection. The parts were mixed with ebony wood and declared as "wood" with values of $50-$60, DOJ said. The duo also allegedly paid bribes to local authorities in Kinshasa, the city where they live, to get the goods out of the Congo. Lokua and Mujangi now stand accused of conspiracy, money laundering, smuggling and Lacey Act violations, facing a maximum of 20 years in prison for the smuggling and money laundering charges and five years for the Lacey Act and conspiracy violations.