By Forum Staff
Aventura Technologies, Inc. pleaded guilty on Tuesday to committing mail and wire fraud conspiracy and illegal importation in federal court in Central Islip, federal prosecutors announced.
The guilty plea reflects Aventura’s long-running, lucrative scheme to purchase Chinese-made security equipment (such as networked surveillance cameras) and resell it as U.S.-made, including to multiple agencies of the U.S. government, branches of the military and to customers overseas in the public and private sectors. The scheme began in 2006, ending in 2019 when charges were brought in this case. Aventura made more than $112 million in sales during that time.
In connection with its guilty plea, the company agreed to dissolve itself and to forfeit more than $3 million in seized assets, including Aventura’s headquarters and a seventy-foot yacht partially owned by the defendants, as well as more than 7,000 seized items of merchandise. All seven individuals charged in this case have pleaded guilty, including Aventura’s nominal President Frances Cabasso and its true chief executive, her husband Jack Cabasso.
In addition to Aventura’s fraudulent resale of Chinese-made goods, the company defrauded customers by falsely claiming that Frances Cabasso was in charge of Aventura in order to obtain access to valuable government contracts reserved for women-owned businesses. Frances Cabasso pled guilty to wire fraud conspiracy in connection with that scheme.
The individual defendants who pled guilty in the case were Frances Cabasso, Jack Cabasso, and senior executives Jonathan Lasker, Christine Lavonne Lazarus and Eduard Matulik, as well as employees Wayne Marino and Alan Schwartz.
As admitted in court, Aventura lied for over a decade to its customers, including the U.S. military, the federal government, numerous private customers in the United States, and public and private sector customers abroad. Between 2008 and November 2019, Aventura made upwards of $112 million, including over $20 million in federal government contracts, while claiming that it was manufacturing its products at its headquarters in Commack. In fact, since at least 2006, Aventura imported goods, primarily from the People’s Republic of China, then resold them as American-made or manufactured in a small number of other countries.
In the course of its investigation, the government intercepted and covertly marked numerous shipments from PRC sources to Commack. In some cases, cameras shipped from the PRC were pre-marked with Aventura’s logo and the phrase “Made in USA,” accompanied by an American flag. In many instances, the items were later resold to government agencies to whom the defendants falsely represented that the products were American-made.
For example: In March 2019, the U.S. Navy ordered from Aventura a $13,500 laser night vision camera that was specified as American-made on Aventura’s U.S. General Services Administration price list. In April 2019 at a shipping facility in Jamaica, a team led by Customs and Border Protection officers intercepted a shipment from a PRC manufacturer to Aventura that contained a camera matching the Navy’s order, and surreptitiously marked it for later identification. Two weeks later, that same camera was delivered to Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, Conn.
