Federal law enforcement arrested eight individuals accused of organizing a large-scale smuggling operation that brought counterfeit goods from China into the United States. The presumed head of the operation remains at large, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors alleged that the organization, which operated through the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach between August 2023 and June 2024, smuggled an estimated $200 million worth of counterfeit and other illegal goods into the United States.
The scheme was discovered during a routine examination of a container by a team of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agriculture specialists in 2023, and soon an investigation was launched….