International Trade Law News

The U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts announced that Bernard Smith, president and part owner of Stealth Components, Inc. ("Stealth"), pleaded guilty on May 11, 2005 to a seven-count Indictment charging him with conspiracy and false Statements in connection with a scheme to avoid paying over $385,000 in U.S. Customs import duties.

As part of his guilty plea, Smith admitted that from November of 1998 through May of 2000, he and others participated in a scheme to defraud the U.S. Custom Service in order to minimize the payment of antidumping duties that Stealth was required to make on imported Korean Dynamic Random Access Memory semiconductors ("DRAMs"). As detailed in the indictment, the scheme involved the presentation of false and fraudulent invoices to U.S. Customs that undervalued the purchase price and falsely described the Korean DRAMs that Stealth imported in order to lessen the cash deposit amount of antidumping duties that Stealth was required to pay. Smith perpetrated this scheme by directing foreign suppliers to prepare fraudulent invoices and other false entry documents that would be presented to U.S. Customs at the time of entry for each shipment of DRAMs that Stealth imported. Over the course of this scheme, Stealth was able to avoid paying more than $385,000 in antidumping duties.

U.S. District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock scheduled Smith's sentencing for September 8, 2005. Smith faces a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison on the conspiracy charge and 2 years in prison on each of the six false statements charges.