US Issues Criminal Charges Against Aventura For Fraudulently Selling Hikvision And Other China Products
By John Honovich, Published Nov 07, 2019, 12:25pm ESTThe US government has made an unprecedented move on the video surveillance supply chain, charging a US company, Aventura for "having conspired with PRC [China] manufacturers" primarily Hikvision, "by falsely claiming that AVENTURA manufactured its own products" and claiming some to be made in the USA.
The US Attorney's presentation called out protecting the USA's "technology supply chain from foreign adversaries and those who would trade our national security for personal profit", as the clip below shows:
The 9-page complaint press release and the 56-page complaint spells out the details of the US government's case.
Conspired with PRC Manufacturers
The complaint alleges that Aventura 'conspired' with PRC manufacturers to falsely claim Aventura made its own products:
Dozens of video surveillance companies regularly and falsely claim to manufacturer their own products, backed by the US Security Industry Association, and this raises concerns for much of the industry.
Hikvision is PRC Manufacturer-1
Hikvision, 'owned by the Government of the PRC', per the complaint, is at the center of the China side, identified throughout as 'PRC Manufacturer-1' and when Hikvision USA is mentioned as 'PRC Manufacturer Subsidiary-1' as shown below:
The complaint's allusion to Hikvision above is confirmed by Schwartz's LinkedIn Profile:
A Hikvision USA employee promised to change Hikvision products such that it would not be discovered that the products were from Hikvision, says the complaint:
Even as recently as the end of 2018, the complaint alleges that Aventura worked with Hikvision USA to hide Hikvision's brand:
Many industry people will retort this is common practice and it is. However, there has long been ethical questions of Hikvision and other China manufacturer's practice to hide their branding and involvement from generally unsuspecting American end-users.
Moreover, the US government emphasized the contradiction about Aventura's head Cabasso calling out Hikvision's government ownership and cybersecurity concerns:
IPVM broke the news in 2016 about The US Embassy in Afghanistan using Hikvision. Hikvision was created and is owned by the PRC Chinese government.
Hikvision was Aventura's largest supplier, according to the complaint, both in terms of shipments:
And in total dollar amount:
The second-largest partner, 'Manufacturer-7', is identified as shipping from Shenzhen but without enough other details to determine who 7 is. However, 7 is alleged to have shipped products as faked 'Made in the USA' as the complaint describes:
And an example of the fake 'Made in the USA' camera (from PRC man 7) in the complaint is shown below:
Cybersecurity Risk
The US government press release emphasizes the vulnerabilities in equipment sold as well as concealing the source:
selling Chinese-made equipment with known cybersecurity vulnerability to government and private customers while falsely representing that the equipment was made in the United States and concealing that the products were manufactured in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
Indeed, the very start of the US Attorney's presentation made it clear this was not just about cybersecurity but 'national security' to 'protect our military and government technology infrastructure from being compromised' as the excerpt below shows:
Hidden Re-Selling of Chinese Equipment Widespread
Hidden re-selling of Chinese equipment has been widespread in the video surveillance industry for many years. It has been so widespread that many, if not most, industry people view it as normal. For example, Honeywell hid OEMing Dahua for many years, as we exposed in this report and video below:
Our directories of China OEMs featuring big names including Panasonic, Honeywell, Stanley have been viewed 100,000+ times over the past year as buyers and industry people try to determine who makes what equipment. See:
Some companies are honest and forthright about what they are selling but most companies, in our experience, normally deny the true source.
Moreover, the US Security Industry Association has facilitated this deception to help their members, like Aventura, profit as we examined in 2018 - SIA Plays Dumb On OEMs And Hikua Ban.
In the announcement, the FBI added:
We have heard many industry people now are now scared. They should be. The industry's complacency about accepting vendors hiding PRC-made products and misrepresenting them as their own needs to stop.
Update: Indictment Filed
The indictment was filed on December 9, 2019:
Most of the points made look to be the same from an initial scan, though more details have been added about specific accounts frozen.
9 reports cite this report:
Comments (166)
Key claim from the press release:
In some cases, cameras shipped from the PRC were pre-marked with Aventura’s logo and the phrase “Made in USA,” accompanied by an American flag. In many instances, the items were later resold to government agencies to whom the defendants falsely represented that the products were American-made. [emphasis made]
UPDATE/ CORRECTION: The compliant does identify the source of the 'made in USA' stickers, it is from 'manufacturer-7' with a Guandong Province address but unnamed and without enough detail for us to identify.
It will be interesting to see what the FBI, DoJ, etc. does to the PRC manufacturers who shipped products falsely labeled as made in the USA.
I knew this from many years back when Aventura installed a project and all cameras where labeled Aventura but MACs, formats and even exploits were all Hikvision.
I'm not sure I like this development. I'm no fan of HikVision, but this seems pretty heavy-handed. I would have thought that they* could just issue a large fine and move on. I guess lying about the country of origin makes it illegal importation, which is the same as smuggling and gets treated the same way?
Reminds me of a time in Oklahoma City when the police were en route to a target for a raid of some sort, and one of the guys with them was a health inspector, and he said, "Hey, I need to do an inspection of this restaurant and it's on the way," so the restaurant got to have a bunch of police men wearing guns barge into the kitchen and look around. Somebody had to issue an apology after that. (I can't find the article on the Oklahoman's website, so I may have gotten part wrong, but I believe the gist of it is accurate.)
I fail to see why cybersecurity is mentioned in the complaint. It is not illegal to sell devices with cybersecurity issues in the U.S. (thankfully, else Amazon and Walmart would have been shut down long ago). Do they have to prove harm in order to charge with illegal importation? Otherwise it looks irrelevant as it is not providing direct evidence for any charge.
* Commerce Department? Not sure who has oversight.
#1 Lying to the Government is a very big deal.
#2 What are the odds Honeywell gets raided?
Cabasso stated that PRC Manufacturer-1 “will acknowledge they manufacture no products outside of China,” and appended an article about the removal of cameras manufactured by PRC Manufacturer-1 from the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan.
do we know if this refers to the IPVM article?
perhaps, when reading the Embassy expose, the GSA serendipitously came across the Aventura article...
or at least i’d like to think so ;)
My first reaction was one of relief that DOJ is taking this very seriously. It wouldn't surprise me if additional charges are piled on after forensics on their files and records are completed, including espionage act charges. As a retired Navy man, I am very happy with this operation, and I suspect this is only the start of a large scale crackdown. Aventura is likely not alone in this sort of scam, and as I write this I'll bet you DOJ has already identified others. Want to stay legit? Sell safe, effective products that are manufactured by friendlies at market wages. Hopefully a side benefit will be a correction of the cost curve in IP markets.
I forgot all about Aventura. I remember talking to them a few years ago about a project that was spec'd with their products. Lavonne told me they were the only USA made IP camera manufacturer at the time. Don't remember if I bid the project or not. As far as Aventura was concerned their products were better than sliced bread.
Kudos to the intrepid member (Undisclosed #1) who posted in this thread in 2015 Is Aventura Really An American Manufacturer?
He or she was on to it almost 5 years ago!

Excellent work, make America great !
Finally!
I am glad to see that Aventura has been exposed and publically charged. I recall several years ago on a tender in the Middle East that Aventura was specified and part of the tender required products to be Made in America. I pushed my partner to challenge this, but he stated that while several questioned the ability of Aventura to supply 100% American made products that Aventura actually produced Country of Origin documents that all of their IP products were in fact Made in the USA.
We went further and suggested to our partner that the end-user request a factory visit to validate this. At our advice the end-user did that, but received a BS story back that Aventura would be happy to host them at their HQ, but couldn't allow them to visit the factory. The story at the time was that they do so much business with government entities around the world that their factory is too "top secret" to allow individuals to visit.
#hilarious
Ultimately, the end-user didn't go with our bid, but at least wised up and didn't choose Aventura!
NBC News has a video of this:
What is explained is not new but there is video of the Aventura office, etc. And the fact that it is being covered on the news shows the attention this is getting it.
While the China element is the lead of the complaint, interestingly they are also charged with fraud for falsely claiming to be a woman-owned business:
defrauding the U.S. government by falsely claiming that Frances Cabasso was the owner and operator of the company in order to obtain access to valuable government contracts reserved for women-owned businesses when, in fact, Aventura was actually controlled by her husband, Jack Cabasso.
My perception is a number of industry companies try to take advantage of such situations. At the same time, I doubt it's common for the government to crack down on that alone, it's worth keeping in mind for people who do this or consider doing this.
This is great news. As to the excuse about a factory audit we are also in the business of supplying the federal government and have no issue with factory visits.
Transparency is a good thing. I hope the crackdown continues and whoever PRC# that helped with this conspiracy is banned from all sales in the US.
is selling hik products that are made elsewhere (e.g. India ) also banned ?
Added: here is a 30-minute video of the DoJ announcement:
SIA provided us the following statement in request to our inquiry:
The Security Industry Association finds today’s charges issued by the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, against Aventura Technologies and members of its management team to be very serious, and if true, would represent business practices that SIA does not condone. The SIA Board of Directors has begun to review these charges and the status of Aventura’s membership in SIA. SIA strongly encourages its members to operate ethically and comply with all U.S. laws and regulations. SIA also continues to fully support federal government efforts to strengthen the integrity of our nation’s supply chain.
Reading through the materials, Hikvision was clearly aware that Aventura was representing Hikvision products as Made in USA, and as being sold to US Government entities.
I would wager that certain high-level Hikvision USA employees are booking flights to China, or minimally, Canada.
This is likely not the end of the arrests in this case.
If the camera can be seen/identified on HikVision's SADP, or Dahua's ConfigTool it should not be on a government network. I am just curious how was Aventura able to keep this scheme going for so long? It literally takes only 30 seconds to check the OUI of a MAC Address. It doesn't sound like these guys were smart enough to buy their own block of OUIs.
WireShark OUI Lookup Tool:
Very glad to see this happening, hope these guys get charged with treason.
This reminds me a bit of the Audi emissions scandal. There is zero chance you get away with this long term.
Update: the post has been significantly re-written to incorporate the recorded conference and the 56-page complaint.
We have obviously not covered every aspect (e.g., there is the yacht and lots of other details). Some of these have already been discussed in the comments and happy to discuss more later. Obviously, we will be reporting more on this in the days and weeks to come.
Note: the fake 'Made In the USA' claim for Hikvision products is not new, e.g., in 2016, we covered how various Hikvision products listed in the US GSA were declared as being 'Made In the USA':
Those listers were not Aventura but other companies as the screencaps above show.
For a long time, we wondered what GSA was doing (or more specifically not). Evidently, today is a signal that things are being done.
Aventura was very focused on Goverment projects; had bumped heads with them on VA projects in the past. It would be very interesting to know how many of those projects will have to be ripped out and replaced. Just the financial liability on that alone has to be enormous.
Few smaller updates:
SIA deleted its new member profile of Aventura, which was posted in December 2017 and still live as of Tuesday. Here is an archived version.
In the profile, SIA described Aventura as having "a strong history as an innovative manufacturer of hardware and software products and peripheral solutions for government, military and enterprise. "
Also, a journalist tweeted out this photo of FBI agents near two boats parked at the Aventura office:
Unclear who the boats belongs to, but I just thought that was interesting given the IPVM discussion last year about bosses parking their boats in the office lot.... the two boats can also be seen on Google Maps:
Those boats are, of course, tiny compared to the "Cabassos’ 70-foot luxury yacht" the FBI said they seized.
Searching the internet is not hard. Check the page footer.
Gallery – Luxury Yacht Charters
What’s On Board – Luxury Yacht Charters 69.5Feet got to be close to 70
Do not know Alan Schwartz, but his LinkedIn title seems to be an admission, no?
"Lead Recreator"?

11/08/19 05:05pm
Although not near as severe as saying that your products are Made in USA, Im curious if this case will have any momentum of charging other companies who explicityly and fraudulently claim that they are a CCTV manufacturer when they are just bringing in products from overseas manufacturers?
I added a new section upfront with a key section from the complaint:
Conspired with PRC Manufacturers
The complaint alleges that Aventura 'conspired' with PRC manufacturers to falsely claim Aventura made its own products:
Dozens of video surveillance companies regularly and falsely claim to manufacturer their own products, backed by the US Security Industry Association, and this raises concerns for much of the industry.
If you are a China manufacturer or a US OEM right now, I would be very, very concerned as this practice is rampant and wrong.
From last year: Why Do OEMs Lie? (Looking At You ENS, LTS, IC Realtime)
A few members of IPVM were pretty diligent about calling this Aventura BS out. Aventura went to ridiculous lengths to cover up the source, even offering tours of their "factory". This one will be interesting to watch unfold and undoubtedly will ripple throughout the industry.
Is it me or am I seeing the trade rags leaving Hikvision out of the articles? I've read several and there is no mention of Hikvision just a PRC manufacturer.
What happens when the end user calls for support? Imagine you have a techie end user who knows how to find the OEM tied to the MAC address. Was HIK knowingly listing the equipment and rerouting tech calls? I wonder how deep the deception went.
HIK goes to great lengths to verify grey label equipment during tech support calls so perhaps this is SOP for them
Here how I imagine it:
- call comes in
- verify model and serial number
- look up what to do in playbook. Ah this is “made in USA equipment”
/ customer support agent puts on midwestern accent .../
We have been looking for some office space in that area. Looks like we have a vacancy.
Update: the US Attorney says that Aventura equipment is in the process of 'all being removed and remediated'.
this story has exploded all over the media - with numerous alarmist headlines that may or may not represent the actual content of the words contained within the story.
but WOW! this is a really, really large deal.
American Greed episode next season for sure.
This is going on where I am, on a smaller scale. This competitor has grown over the past few years. It's pretty messed up that we can lose business to our dishonest competitors that are on GSA schedule, State Contract & selling their, Dahua, Hikvision & Geovision, saying THEY are the manufactured in the USA. I'd like to get paid damages to my company for these other companies being awarded federal or Municipal projects. Having them arrested and shutdown would be great too. Being on a State contract means they don't have to go out to bid. They can just purchase what they want from an approved vendor. They should be really nervous right now. Its not very hard to prove they have been misrepresenting themselves and being dishonest to their customers. All that they dishonestly worked for could be gone. What would be the best way to go after them? And who's gonna take action?
Can former employees who also knew of the deception be located and charged? It would seem that there were probably more than a few employees who were aware of this illegal activity, and just because they aren't working at Aventura any longer .... does this absolve them of any wrongdoing?
This is a game changer for the industry. No longer can a company deny the fact there cameras (or any other product) are actually OEM'd from another company. (Regardless of company of origin). Is anyone concerned about non PRC OEM'd cameras? I think legally you have to ask the question and the manufacture has to answer honestly or face the consequences. (Fraud)
Update: The indictment was filed on December 9, 2019:
Most of the points made look to be the same from an initial scan, though more details have been added about specific accounts frozen.
Notable, the government continues to declare Hikvision as owned by the PRC government:
Update: Jack Cabasso was arraigned and plead not guilty on all counts, excerpt below:
His attorney is Albert Dayan who has a long list of federal indictments being dismissed.
Another court filing says Cabasso is engaged in plea negotiations:
Are you telling us these cheats are getting away with this and allowed to open back up? Unbelievable!!!! So there are other companies lying about manufacturing in the USA, what happens to them now? It's bad enough that unlicensed companies are selling and installing camera systems in a state that requires a license. Even worse is a so-called security company posing to manufacture their own products, sells, installs their rubber-stamped overseas parts claiming proudly to be made in the USA. Google image the products they are showing on the GSA list. Clearly they are not. What's their loophole?
Update: The criminal case is still ongoing with this month's letters being filed showing data seized from Aventura's office and obtained from Microsoft via search warrant.
USA_v_Cabasso_et_al__nyedce-19-00582__0160.0
There is a protective order in place filed in May, restricting access to much of the information in the trial.
Update: While the criminal case continues, the yacht has become an issue.
A letter sent by the counsel for Dr. Eric Weinstein claims that the yacht is 50% owned by Weinstein via a holding company that Weinstein and the Aventuras split ownership of. Public records of this holding company show Cabasso and Weinstein as officers of the company.
The letter says that:
Dr. Weinstein and IShine are innocent owners of the Seized Yacht. 1 Dr. Weinstein initially invested approximately $475,000 into the Seized Yacht. He paid $125,000 upfront and took a loan for the remaining $350,000 that he pays back to the lending bank at a rate of $5,000 per month. He is continuing to make these loan payments, even though Ms. Cabasso is not chipping in, and even though the yacht has been seized....
Dr. Weinstein estimates that more than $165,000 worth of repair work was needed when the boat was seized in 2019. Upon information and belief, the Seized Yacht has only continued to deteriorate since its seizure, causing further damage to the fiberglass, decking, plumbing, electric equipment, battery, and engine.
They are "requesting that the Court order an immediate interlocutory sale of the Seized Yacht over Ms. Cabasso’s objections."