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The new federal inquiry in the Vancouver case comes amid heightened concerns about fake air bags being smuggled from overseas and sold in the United States.
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Testing of air bags seized in recent North Carolina and Tennessee criminal cases revealed consistent malfunctions, from failure to inflate to expulsion of shrapnel or flames on impact.
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In May, Clark County detectives, working with retail crime investigators, seized over a quarter of a million dollars worth of stolen merchandise from the Vancouver home of Yveginey A. and Lyudmila Smirnov.
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In the garage, investigators also found several large boxes with Hong Kong shipping labels that contained 196 air bags, each wrapped in plastic. An eBay account tied to the Vancouver couple revealed they were selling the air bags on the Internet auction site, investigators said.
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Federal homeland security officials asked investigators in the Smirnov case to provide them with photos of the air bags. The request last month came as the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a safety advisory on the dangers of counterfeit air bags.
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Air bags are designed to inflate during a collision. They're required by law to be installed in a vehicle's interior and must meet federal regulatory requirements. If an air bag does not, federal officials view it as an "undeclared explosive," federal court records show.
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Fake air bags look nearly identical to certified car parts, including the insignia and major automakers' branding they bear.
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The traffic safety administration is working closely with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the crimes.
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"Organized criminals are selling dangerous counterfeit and substandard air bags to consumers and suppliers with little to no regard to hazardous health and safety consequences," ICE Director John Morton said last month.?
Federal authorities have seized about 2,500 counterfeit air bags this year, Morton said. But he also emphasized that only .1 percent of all cars have counterfeit bags.
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Andrew S. Munoz, spokesman for the ICE Seattle office, said he could not talk about an ongoing investigation. But Munoz urged consumers who worry their air bags might be fakes to check the website www.safercar.gov.?
"When it comes to replacement air bags, we encourage consumers to have them replaced at an authorized new car dealership or repair shop that uses original equipment manufacturer (OEM) replacement parts," Munoz said in an email.
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Yevginey Smirnov, according to a search warrant affidavit, was questioned by Camas police in 2004 for selling suspected stolen air bags online. At that time, Smirnov said he was buying vehicles at auctions to restore and resell. The air bags, he told authorities, did not fit his vehicle model, so he sold them.
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Counterfeiting of auto parts has long been a problem, industry officials said. But recent incidents have escalated concerns.
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In August, federal agents confiscated nearly 1,600 counterfeit air bags from a home and business associated with Igor Borodin, a North Carolina auto mechanic. Borodin bought the bogus air bags from China and then resold them on eBay. The mechanic last month pleaded guilty in federal court to sales of counterfeit air bags, telling investigators he knew the bags were fake, according to federal court records.?
Borodin also was tied to a counterfeit air bag case in Tennessee.
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In February, Dai Zhensong, a Chinese citizen, was sentenced in federal court in Chattanooga, Tenn., to three years and one month in prison for trafficking in counterfeit air bags through a company in which he was a partner.
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Authorities intercepted 334 counterfeit air bags that Zhensong's company in China sent to a Chattanooga customer, federal court records show. In 2010, Zhensong also traveled to Chattanooga to sell counterfeit air bags.?
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POTENTIALLY AT RISK
Consumers who replaced airbags in the past three years at repair shops that are not part of new car dealerships.
Owners of used cars that may have sustained airbag deployments before purchase.
Car owners with titles marked "salvage," "rebuilt" or "reconstructed."
Buyers of replacement airbags on eBay or other non-certified sources, especially airbags priced under $400.
Zhensong's company would buy genuine airbags, which were then torn down and used to create molds for counterfeit bags. Trademark emblems were purchased through Honda, Toyota, Audi, BMW and other dealerships in China and affixed to counterfeit bags, according to court records.?
The air bags were advertised online and sold for approximately $50 to $70 each, far below the approximately $1,000 value of an authentic air bag, federal records say.
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"To send these devices via airplane into the United States and allow them to enter commerce and reach unsuspecting consumers, puts numerous persons at risk of serious injury or death,"Assistant U.S. Attorney John P. MacCoon wrote in a federal sentencing document in the Zhensong case.
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Charlie Hogarty, a California-based consultant for the Automotive Body Parts Association, said counterfeit air bags are particularly unsafe. "Those things are so precise. It's not even safe to take one out from one make and model and put it in another. They won't work," Hogarty said.
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Barbara Crest, executive director of the Northwest Automotive Trades Association, said consumers should know it's not worth the savings to buy air bags online from a source that's not reputable.
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"It's truly buyer beware," Crest said. "There's no price that's worth taking a shortcut. You're endangering your own lives and your families for a couple of bucks on an airbag you can't trust. What it is, is criminal."
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Maxine Bernstein;
Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2012/10/federal_officials_investigatin.html
THE AMERICAS
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