NY Tech Firm Sold Chinese Equipment to U.S. Military after Falsely Claiming It was American-Made
A Long Island tech firm sold Chinese equipment to the U.S. military while fraudulently claiming the products were American-made, according to New York’s NBC 4.
Federal agents arrested six current and former executives and employees of Aventura Technologies on Thursday morning, and subsequently raided the company’s headquarters. Agents representing the FBI, Customs, the IRS and other agencies were seen carrying out the raid.
The suspects are expected to appear in Brooklyn federal court.
“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,” United States Attorney Richard Donoghue said in a statement.
Company representatives did not return National Review‘s request for comment in time for publication.
The allegations against Aventura Technologies are raising fears about the materials the company sold to the U.S. military, which are currently in use in the navy and other military branches.
Aventura describes itself as a “designer, developer and manufacturer” of security hardware and software products for “government, military and enterprise.” The company offers cameras and other hardware for video surveillance, face recognition and artificial intelligence software, and a variety of X-ray and scanning equipment, among other products.
The raid comes at a time of rising tensions between the U.S. and China. At a Senate subcommittee hearing on Tuesday, Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) criticized tech companies Apple and TikTok for being “two sides of the same coin when it comes to data security: the danger of Chinese tech platforms’ entry into the U.S. market, and the danger of American tech companies’ operations in China.”
