LOS ANGELES — A Paramount-based clothing wholesale company executive was sentenced Friday to four years in federal prison for undervaluing imported garments in a scheme to avoid paying millions of dollars in customs duties.
Mohamed Daoud Ghacham, 40, of Bell, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, who also ordered him to pay nearly $6.4 million in restitution, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Ghacham pleaded guilty in December 2022 to one federal count of conspiracy to pass false and fraudulent papers through a custom house.
Ghacham’s company, Ghacham Inc., which does business under the Platini brand name, imported clothing from China and submitted fraudulent invoices to U.S. Customs and Border Protection that undervalued the shipments, allowing the company to avoid paying the full amounts of tariffs owed on the imports.
At Mohamed Ghacham’s direction, Chinese suppliers would prepare two invoices for the clothing ordered by Ghacham Inc. — a true invoice, which reflected the actual price paid for the goods, and a fraudulent “customs invoice,” which reflected an understated price. Ghacham Inc. submitted the customs invoices to CBP and customs brokers to fraudulently reduce the tariffs owed on the imports, while it maintained the true invoices in its accounting records.
From July 2011 to February 2021, Ghacham Inc. and Mohamed Ghacham undervalued imported garments by more than $32 million and failed to pay nearly $6.4 million in customs duties.
Ghacham Inc. pleaded guilty to the charge of conspiracy to pass false papers and one count of conspiracy to engage in any transaction or dealing in properties of a specially designated narcotics trafficker under a statute known as the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.
It was the first criminal conviction in the district under the Kingpin Act, federal prosecutors said.
At sentencing last year, the company was ordered to pay nearly $10.4 million and placed on probation for five years for undervaluing imported garments in a scheme to avoid paying millions of dollars in customs duties and for doing business with a woman linked to Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel.
Ghacham Inc. was also ordered by U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong in December to create and maintain an anti-money-laundering compliance and ethics program and submit to review by a third-party monitor, who will report to the court on an annual basis, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Ghacham Inc. had illegally conducted business with María Tiburcia Cazarez Pérez in violation of the Kingpin Act, which prohibits people and businesses in the United States from doing business with “specially designated narcotics traffickers,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Cazarez Pérez was previously listed under the act for her involvement in the financial network of leaders of the Mexico-based Sinaloa Cartel.
“The company flouted the Kingpin Act, doing business with member of a money laundering network used by … two of the world’s most notorious drug traffickers,” prosecutors argued in a sentencing memorandum. “It cheated taxpayers out of millions, both to save itself money and to secure an unfair edge against its competition in the Southern California garment market. And it did so through a sustained, extensive effort over the course of more than a decade.”
Mohamed Ghacham was not charged in connection with the Kingpin Act violation.
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