The owner of a Costa Mesa-based company was sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison Thursday for selling counterfeit products, which were sometimes used in military equipment.
Rogelio Vasquez of Orange, 44, pleaded guilty in January to four felony counts in a 30-count indictment handed down in February 2018. The indictment alleged that he acquired from sources in China “old, used and/or discarded” integrated circuits that were doctored so they could be resold as if they were new.
U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton sentenced Vasquez to 46 months behind bars and ordered him to pay $144,000 in restitution.
Vasquez agreed to forfeit $97,362 in cash and 169,148 counterfeit integrated circuits seized in the investigation, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
He admitted trafficking more than 9,000 integrated circuits with a value of $894,218 over seven years, prosecutors said.
Vasquez instructed a testing lab in China to give him two versions of a test report, including one with the correct results and another “sanitized version to provide to his customer” which would conceal that the parts were used or in “poor condition,” according to the indictment.