An Oregon man may face up to 10 years for selling over $2.5 million in fake N95 masks to third-party companies that then sold them to health care providers during the pandemic.
Jiang Yu, 70, pled guilty earlier this month to one count of conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods, which carries a maximum 10 year sentence, a $2 million fine, and three years of supervised release. The charge doesn’t carry a mandatory minimum sentence. The Oregon District Attorney’s Office charged Yu in October.
According to court filings, USA v. Yu, Yu imported and sold masks with counterfeit markings — such as “NIOSH” or “3M” — from May 2020 to about June 2021. Yu’s three co-conspirators were listed as “unknown.”
“Defendant and his co-conspirators sold at least $2,531,857.53 in counterfeit masks to various purchasers,” stated one court filing. “The majority of sales were to third-party companies, many of whom sold to healthcare providers.”
In order to conceal the counterfeiting, Yu and his unnamed co-conspirators reportedly created fake documents and certificates of authenticity. Yu’s plea agreement letter admitted to supplying the masks while his co-conspirators posted videos on social media advertising the masks for sale as authentic.
“[W]hen customers raised questions about the authenticity of the products, [Yu] worked with [the co-conspirators] to design and edit fake certificates of authenticity in an attempt to lull and trick purchasers about the nature of their counterfeit products,” stated the letter.
Yu is scheduled to be sentenced on May 21, 2024, before Judge Michael Mosman in the Oregon District Court. As part of his plea agreement, Yu must forfeit over 380,000 counterfeit 3M N95 masks, over 164,000 EA counterfeit 3M masks, over 51,000 EA Makrite counterfeit masks, a 2004 Lamborghini Gallardo, a 2012 Mercedes ML350, and over $25,900.
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Medical Pros, a medical supply company established in April 2020, claimed it purchased numerous counterfeit masks from Yu. They sued Yu’s company, Airfiltech, in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
Per their lawsuit, the company claimed they suffered over $3.6 million in damages. Closure for their case awaits the outcome of the federal criminal case.
According to the Oregon secretary of state’s business registration database, Airfiltech was headquartered in Milwaukie, Oregon, and first registered back in 2013. Yu served as a manager for Airfiltech according to their annual reports.
The FBI and Homeland Security Investigations led on the case against Yu.
Yu’s counterfeit mask business was one of several lucrative operations that capitalized on the severe demand for personal protective equipment early on in the pandemic.
In the first year of the pandemic, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) reported seizing over 21.2 million counterfeit masks as part of Operation Stolen Promise, launched in April 2020. In late 2020 and early 2021, HSI agents seized over 11 million counterfeit 3M masks routed for delivery to hospital workers and first responders.
Earlier this year, a Chandler, Arizona, man — Mark Forrest Cohn, 68 — was sentenced to one year of probation and thousands in restitution for importing and selling counterfeit 3M N95 masks from China in 2020. Some of Cohn’s counterfeit masks were shipped to a Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In 2021, HSI seized over two million counterfeit N95 masks purchased by the state of Maine from late 2020 to early 2021.