Stephanie McCloskey, former employee of VisionTech in Clearwater Florida, has received her sentencing. She will serve 38 months for selling counterfeits to the military. This is the first federal prosecution involving trafficking of counterfeit integrated circuits. Shannon Wren, who was the owner of the company, has recently died of a drug overdose which one could assume was related to the stress of this case.
VisionTech was known in the industry as one of the more blatant distributors of counterfeit electronic components, but there are many more out there. We hope this sends a signal to the rest of them that it is a dangerous trade and even the potential financial gains are not worth the consequences.
To read the recent article on sentencing from the Washington Post click here.
Robb Hammond, founder and president of AERI (American Electronic Resource, Inc.). Founding member and former committee chair of the SAE AS6081 Standard created for the avoidance of counterfeit electronic components. Robb founded AERI in Costa Mesa, California, in 1994 as an independent distributor of hard-to-find, obsolete and allocated electronic components. AERI is AS9120B, ISO 9001:2015 and AS6081 certified, tests to AS6171 standards, and inspects every part in its in-house QC lab before it ships. Robb writes about electronic component shortages, sourcing strategy and counterfeit avoidance.
