The owner of a New York-based tech company told his customers — including the U.S. government — that his security and surveillance equipment was manufactured in the U.S. But federal prosecutors this week said the “Made in the USA” labels on the products offered by Aventura Technologies Inc. were a lie.
Company officials were involved in a lucrative scheme from 2006 to 2019 to buy Chinese-made security equipment — such as networked surveillance cameras — and resell them as U.S.-made. Their customers included multiple agencies of the U.S. government and branches of the military.
Aventura made more than $112 million before charges were brought in the case, federal officials said.
The company also defrauded customers and the government by claiming that Frances Cabasso was in charge so Aventura could obtain access to valuable government contracts reserved for women-owned businesses. The true CEO was her husband, Jack Cabasso, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Frances Cabasso worked as a bookkeeper at a nearby company but rarely visited Aventura’s New York headquarters, officials said.
“For years, the defendants, while pretending to be a women-owned business, intentionally corrupted the U.S. military supply chain by passing off Chinese-made networked electronics with known vulnerabilities as American-made,” said Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
In March 2019, the U.S. Navy ordered a $13,500 laser night vision camera from the company. The next month, Customs and Border Protection officers intercepted a shipment to Aventura from a Chinese company. After discovering a camera matching the Navy’s order, they secretly marked it for later identification.
Two weeks later, that same camera was delivered to the Navy’s primary submarine base in New London, Connecticut, prosecutors said.
Aventura sold the Air Force 25 body cameras in 2018 and was contractually required to provide the goods from a limited set of countries that didn’t include the People’s Republic of China. An Air Force service member became suspicious after noting Chinese characters on the built-in screen of one of the body cameras, officials said.
Aventura officials claimed the company manufactured its products at its plant in Commack, New York. But prosecutors said the firm was importing security items from China before reselling them as American-made.
“The company’s marketing relied heavily on U.S. flags and ‘American-made’ branding, and its sales force routinely asserted that Aventura was the sole U.S. manufacturer of security equipment,” government officials said.
Jack Cabasso went to extreme lengths to conceal the Chinese origins of his products and even accused his competitors of reselling Chinese-made goods. Visitors to the company’s headquarters were shown a fictitious lab and told the off-limits building was reserved for classified government work.
“In fact, Aventura did not own or occupy the building in question,” officials said.
Jack Cabasso and his wife, along with five other company officials, pleaded guilty this week to charges ranging from mail and wire fraud conspiracy to illegal importation. As part of its guilty plea, the company agreed to dissolve itself and forfeit more than $3 million in seized assets, including Aventura’s headquarters, a 70-foot yacht partially owned by the defendants, and more than 7,000 seized items of merchandise, officials said.
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.