Wednesday, November 09, 2011
"Black-topped" chip (photo-ESCS)
Faulty procurement by the Department of Defense has allowed counterfeit computer chips made in China to wind up in the parts inventory of advanced weapons systems.
The embarrassing revelation was exposed by the U.S. Navy and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement service, which uncovered the fact that a small Florida company had brokered nearly $16 million in high-tech hardware from a Chinese supplier. The problem with the purchases was that the parts were made at factory in China using inferior and recycled materials that falsely labeled them as being products from Intel, Texas Instruments and Motorola, using a process known as “black topping,” in which the original brand markings are ground off, covered in black paint and remarked.
The company, VisionTech Components, has since been closed down by the federal government. But not before it sold bogus materials to the Pentagon for use in advanced fighters, radar systems and missiles.
The Government Accountability Office found that counterfeit routers with high failure rates had been sold to the Navy, and that counterfeit microprocessors had been purchased by the U.S. Air Force for use on F-15 flight control computers.
The owner of VisionTech, Shannon Wren, and the company’s administrative manager, Stephanie McCloskey, were arrested in September 2010. Wren died of a drug overdose in May 2011; McCloskey pleaded guilty to conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods and to commit mail fraud and on October 25 she was sentenced to 38 months in prison.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
Counterfeit Chips Plague Pentagon Weapons Systems (by R. Jeffrey Smith, iWatch News)
Visiontech Administrator Sentenced to Prison for Role in Sales of Counterfeit Circuits Destined to US Military (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
Man Accused of Selling Counterfeit Microchips Had a Passion for Drag Racing (by Stephen Nohlgren and William Levesque, St. Petersburg Times)
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