LI company busted for illegally selling Chinese-made products to US military

A Long Island security company has been busted for duping U.S. military forces into spending millions on vulnerable Chinese-made equipment by branding its wares as American-made, federal prosecutors revealed Thursday.

Aventura Technologies, Inc. peddled security cameras, turnstiles and other sensitive safety gear to a host of government agencies — including the Army, Navy and Air Force — that were falsely advertised as either made in the U.S. or completely lacking mandatory country-of-origin markings, prosecutors allege in a criminal complaint.

Purported company owners Jack and Frances Cabasso and five other current and former employees were arrested on a slate of charges including a money-laundering conspiracy, wire fraud and unlawful importation.

Prosecutors say the company billed its products as homemade — with some even baring phony “Made in the USA labels — even though they were actually smuggled into the States from China and elsewhere.

Some of the Chinese-made cameras Aventura sold to the military are known to have “vulnerabilities that could allow a hacker to remotely assume control of a networked camera and obtain sensitive data,” the criminal complaint alleges.

The alleged fakers, based out of Comack, raked in $20.7 million from sales with the U.S. government between August 2006 and November 2018, prosecutors charge.

In total the company collected $88 million in sales with both public and private sector clients since November 2010, prosecutors say.

Six of the defendants are slated to be arraigned in Brooklyn Federal court Thursday afternoon.

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