Long Island Firm Busted For Selling Chinese-Made Equipment

Commack, NY -- A Commack-based company is being accused of selling illegally imported Chinese-made tech surveillance equipment and selling it as U.S. made to branches of the U.S. military.

U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue says the equipment, sold by Aventura Technologies, created serious cyber security risks.

“As alleged, the defendants falsely claimed for years that their surveillance and security equipment was manufactured on Long Island, padding their pockets with money from lucrative contracts without regard for the risk to our country’s national security posed by secretly peddling made-in-China electronics with known cyber vulnerabilities,” stated United States Attorney Donoghue. 

Donoghue says seven company senior executives, including Aventura's owner Jack Cabasso and wife Frances Cabasso, were taken into custody.

According to the Justice Department’s release, “Four of the individual defendants are also charged with defrauding the U.S. government by falsely claiming that Frances Cabasso was the owner and operator of the company in order to obtain access to valuable government contracts reserved for women-owned businesses when, in fact, Aventura was actually controlled by her husband, Jack Cabasso. The Cabassos are also charged with laundering the monetary proceeds of these fraudulent schemes.”

Authorities said the company was in business for more than a decade and made its owners millions, by trading on national security for personal profit.

“Aventura has generated more than $88 million in sales revenue since November 2010, and the charged scheme has been ongoing since 2006,” the statement says.