International Trade Law News

Bernard Smith, the President and part owner of Stealth Components, Inc., a distributor of computer components, was sentenced today in connection with a scheme to avoid paying over $385,000 in antidumping duties. Federal District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock of the District of Massachusetts sentenced Smith to 3 years of probation, the first 4 months of which are to be spent in community confinement, to be followed by 8 months and 1 day in home detention with electronic monitoring. Smith was also ordered to pay a $30,000 fine.

In May 2005, Smith pleaded guilty to a seven-count indictment charging him with conspiracy and false statements. Smith admitted that from November of 1998 through May of 2000, he and others participated in a scheme to defraud U.S. Custom's in order to minimize the payment of antidumping duties that Stealth was required to make on imported Korean Dynamic Random Access Memory chips (DRAMs). 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 payment amount for antidumping duties that Stealth was required to make. It was alleged that Smith directed foreign suppliers to prepare fraudulent invoices and other false entry documents that would be presented to Customs at the time of entry for each shipment of DRAMs that Stealth imported.