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A court in Florida, United States has sentenced Taiwanese national, Pen Yu to three years and eight months in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The US Department of Justice disclosed this in a statement published on its website over the weekend.
The 51-year-old’s prison term is to be followed by three years of supervised release.
The court also ordered the convict to forfeit $100,000, the proceeds of the wire fraud.
Yu pleaded guilty on May 2, while his co-conspirators Gregory Muñoz and Jonathan Thyng pleaded guilty on May 9 and July 23 respectively.
The DoJ’s statement read, “According to court documents, beginning in at least July 2016 and continuing through at least May 2023, Yu ordered biochemical products from MilliporeSigma, a subsidiary of multinational science and technology company Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, with help from Muñoz, a MilliporeSigma salesperson, by falsely representing that Yu was affiliated with a biology research lab at a large Florida university.
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“This fictitious affiliation led MilliporeSigma to provide Yu over $4.9 million worth of discounts and other benefits, such as free overnight shipping, not available to the public.
“Yu gave Muñoz thousands of dollars in gift cards for facilitating these fraudulent discounted orders. When the products arrived at the university stockroom, a stockroom employee diverted the products to Yu, who repackaged them and shipped them to China. To avoid scrutiny, Yu made false statements about the value and contents of these shipments in export documents.
“This scheme continued until MilliporeSigma compliance personnel identified certain orders as suspicious, prompting the company to retain outside counsel who voluntarily disclosed the misconduct to the Department of Justice’s National Security Division only a week later.
“MilliporeSigma made the disclosure well before its counsel had completed their investigation and understood the full nature and extent of the scheme. MilliporeSigma offered exceptional cooperation to the prosecution team, including by proactively identifying and producing documents to the Department that established probable cause to search residences and electronic devices of culpable individuals.
“MilliporeSigma’s cooperation allowed investigators to quickly identify the individuals responsible for the scheme, including Yu, Muñoz and Thyng, and secure their felony guilty pleas.”
