Crime Indictment Returned Alleging Massive Cisco Device Fraud Scheme

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Indictment Returned Alleging Massive Cisco Device Fraud Scheme​

Attention owners of Cisco Systems routers and other networking devices: Check those products carefully.

A federal grand jury in New Jersey has returned an indictment against a Florida man accused of trafficking in over $1 billion in counterfeit Cisco networking equipment between 2014 and 2022.

According to the allegation, Onur Aksoy, also known as Ron Aksoy or Dave Durden, ran almost two dozen New Jersey and Florida-based companies as more than a dozen Amazon storefronts and almost a dozen eBay storefronts (collectively Pro Network Entities) hawking fraudulent and counterfeit Cisco devices imported from Hong Kong.

The devices were usually older, lower-model products and castoffs modified to appear genuinely new, enhanced and more expensive devices, some with pirated Cisco software and unauthorized components, including components circumventing license circumvention detection software.

Chinese counterfeiters used fake Cisco labels, stickers, boxes and documentation to make them appear factory-sealed.

The devices would fail, malfunction and cause “significant” damage to users‘ networks, in some cases thousands of dollars worth.

Cisco had yet to return a request for comment about whether it had any way to help people identify whether they had counterfeit equipment.

 

[John McAfee]

If you're buying used cisco equipment and plugging it into your production environment without configuration, you need new IT people.

The bootleg hardware intrigues me though, never got one from ebay, yet. Love to poke around one.

 

[SiccDicc]

The devices would fail, malfunction and cause “significant” damage to users‘ networks, in some cases thousands of dollars worth.

Awwww... and I was ready to make a joke that the counterfeits were probably better... it's just the same quality.

Nah, but seriously I've only ever had trouble with Cisco. Was very disappointed to find they bought a company I liked. No idea if it's me or if it's them, all I know is that we're incompatible.

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

Seems like an act of war.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

Awwww... and I was ready to make a joke that the counterfeits were probably better... it's just the same quality.

Nah, but seriously I've only ever had trouble with Cisco. Was very disappointed to find they bought a company I liked. No idea if it's me or if it's them, all I know is that we're incompatible.

Out of curiosity, which company did they acquire that you liked?

 

[Socrates]

Florida and massive, mind boggling levels of corporate, civic, and likely spiritual fraud, name a more iconic duo.

 

[Keavy Rain]

Florida Man strikes again, this time setting aside meth, alligators and stabbings over game consoles to wreak havoc on the world of IT.

Godspeed, Florida Man.

 

[SiccDicc]

Out of curiosity, which company did they acquire that you liked?

Shoot, it's been awhile since they did it. I wanna say Linksys, but I'm not too sure. I just remember the quality of the product I had before and then whatever bowel movement Cisco tried to sell me.

As soon as Cisco slapped its name on the next model it was acting like "Fuck you in particular, sir."

 

[Retink]

a Florida man accused of trafficking in over $1 billion in counterfeit Cisco networking equipment between 2014 and 2022.

Florida man took it too a whole new level this time, hope it bought him the real good meth for 1 billion dollars.

 

[Your Starter for 10]

A billion dollars worth of used servers - let's say they were $10k a pop (which seems high , but let's go with it) is like 100K servers over 8 years. I mean this is holocaust levels of math here.

Edit - Maybe Null could upgrade to one of these counterfeit ones after they're released from evidence.

 

[Blimp]

Shoot, it's been awhile since they did it. I wanna say Linksys, but I'm not too sure. I just remember the quality of the product I had before and then whatever bowel movement Cisco tried to sell me.

As soon as Cisco slapped its name on the next model it was acting like "Fuck you in particular, sir."

Cisco absolutely did not want a situation where people were using routers for half a decade or more like 54G's with DD-WRT/Tomato and an overclock, so to solve this problem, newer shit like the E-series routers had about 3-4 different performance brackets, where buying anything other than the good one means you get a shitty amount of RAM, some undocumented Atheros/Marvell CPU with a radio to match, and limited custom firmware options going to ZERO because the flash has been purposely crippled at 2MB or less. It was truly the end of an era when Cisco ruined a brand that got a lot of people into networking, but this still showed the world the common man can handle networking, and gave an opening for things like MicroTik. Netgear and Asus stuff is also plenty acceptable today if you want an AIO, and aren't as retarded when it comes to custom firmware. I remember Buffalo was also a good alternative at one point, and a lot of their early buzz cashed-in on the fact Linksys was quite literally a former shell of itself

The home router scene today is a lot more sterile than it used to be, and I blame a lot of that on the fact that routers don't look like 54G's anymore (and hardware locks + encrypted blobs/binaries), this shit was ICONIC

 

[Snekposter]

Florida and massive, mind boggling levels of corporate, civic, and likely spiritual fraud, name a more iconic duo.

California and the same.