Marc Heera, 24 of Sunrise Florida was sentenced to Federal prison following his guilty plea for trafficking in counterfeit goods.
As part of his plea to the Federal Indictment, Heera admitted that, beginning in 2009, he arranged for Hondata’s K-Pro and S300 devices to be reverse-engineered. After executing a search warrant, the FBI discovered that Heera manufactured counterfeit circuit boards at his workplace which contained Hondata’s proprietary software, which Heera later admitted to. In furtherance of his intent to defraud the public, Heera’s counterfeit devices bore Hondata’s trademarked name and logos, as well as counterfeit serial numbers. Heera also admitted creating counterfeit packaging, labels, instructions and compact discs for the devices. In addition to jail time, Heera is required to pay significant restitution as well as be subject to additional monitoring.
Let this be a lesson to those who think that intellectual property has no value. We will take whatever measures are necessary to protect ourselves and our customers.
In addition to the Federal criminal charges, Hondata is prosecuting Heera in California State Court and seeking very substantial civil damages.
