Defendant Also Sentenced for Applying for a Passport Using a Missing Child’s Identity
OAKLAND – LAWFUEL – The Law News Network – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California announced that Behzad Mofrad, of San Ramon, California, was sentenced in federal court today to 33 months in prison and ordered to pay over $690,000 in restitution related to his participation in a conspiracy to defraud Cisco Systems, Inc. of networking hardware in 2002 and to his fraudulent application for a passport in 2005. Mr. Mofrad was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Saundra B Armstrong.
Mr. Mofrad pleaded guilty on November 14, 2005, to one count of conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371, one count of mail fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1341 and one count of passport fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1542. According to the plea agreement, Mr. Mofrad admitted to participating in a scheme in which a co-conspirator, Sean Breen, illegally accessed and used an on-line customer account of Cisco to order $690,000 of Cisco hardware while falsely posing as one of Cisco’s existing customers. Breen arranged to have the hardware delivered in separate shipments via Federal Express to “Comtel Logistics,” a non-existent company that the conspirators had created for the purpose of receiving the fraudulently obtained hardware. Mofrad leased a storefront in Oakland to act as a business location for Comtel Logistics and to receive the hardware. After receiving the hardware, the conspirators sold it on the “gray market” to a company known as Western Data Transfer. (The term “gray market” refers to the sale of goods outside normal distribution channels.)
According to the plea agreement, Mr. Mofrad also applied for a passport in the name of Kevin Andrew Collins after his indictment and arrest on the charges related to the scheme to defraud Cisco. Passport examiners in the San Francisco office of the Department of State recognized the name “Kevin Collins” as being that of a 10-year-old child abducted in San Francisco in 1984. The investigation determined that Mofrad was not involved in the disappearance of Kevin Collins, who remains missing to this day.
In February 2004, Mofrad’s co-conspirator, Sean Breen, was sentenced to 50 months in prison for charges related to the scheme to defraud Cisco, as well as to charges related to Breen’s involvement in the violation of criminal copyright laws as a member of two large Internet-based software piracy rings. Further information on Mr. Breen’s case is available at http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/can/press/html/2004_02_10_breen.html.
The prosecution was overseen by the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Kyle F. Waldinger is the Assistant U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting the case. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by agents of the U.S. Secret Service, agents of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service, and inspectors of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
Further Information:
A copy of this press release and related court filings may be found on the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s website at www.usdoj.gov/usao/can.
Electronic court filings and further procedural and docket information are available at https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.
Judges’ calendars with schedules for upcoming court hearings can be viewed on the court’s website at www.cand.uscourts.gov.
All press inquiries to the U.S. Attorney’s Office should be directed to Luke Macaulay at (415) 436-6757 or by email at Luke.Macaulay@usdoj.gov.
