A 49-year-old man has become the latest person brought down by a federal investigation targeting people trafficking in counterfeit Cisco network hardware.
“Ehab Ashoor, 49 … [of] Sugarland, Texas, was sentenced in the Southern District of Texas to 51 months in prison and ordered to pay $119,400 in restitution to Cisco Systems, the Department of Justice said in a May 6 news release. Ashoor was found guilty Jan. 22 of purchasing counterfeit Cisco GBICs (Gigabit Interface Converters) “from an online vendor in China with the intention of selling them to the U.S. Department of Defense for use by U.S. Marine Corps personnel operating in Iraq. The computer network for which the GBICs were intended is used by the U.S. Marine Corps to transmit troop movements, relay intelligence and maintain security for a military base west of Fallujah, Iraq,” the DOJ said.