A 70 year-old West Linn man pleaded guilty Monday to a single federal charge for importing and selling more than $2.5 million in fake N95 masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most went to vendors, many of whom sold them to health care providers, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Jiang Yu appeared before Senior U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mosman in downtown Portland, where he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to traffic counterfeit goods.
This December 2020 image provided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shows a counterfeit N95 surgical mask that was seized by ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement / AP
From May 2020 through June 2021, Yu worked with three other unnamed co-conspirators to import and sell thousands of fake N95 masks.
Some masks had fake 3M images, according to Yu’s plea agreement. When customers “raised questions about the authenticity of products,” the plea agreement states, Yu and his co-conspirators worked to “design and edit fake certificates of authenticity in an attempt to lull and trick purchasers about the nature of their counterfeit products.”
Yu and his co-conspirators also “posted videos on social media advertising the sale of the masks while falsely claiming the genuine nature of the products,” according to Yu’s plea agreement.
In court on Monday, Yu agreed to forfeit nearly 600,000 fake masks that the FBI had already seized. He also agreed to turn over to the federal government more than $25,000 in cash, a 2004 Lamborghini Gallardo, and a 2012 Mercedes ML350 SUV.
Yu faces up to 10 years in prison and up to a $2 million fine. He’s scheduled to be sentenced in May.