Remember the two knuckleheads who dared try to import counterfeit Disney collectible pins and sell them on the Internet?
Hell, even Vlad Putin's too scared of the Mouse to pull that shit.
The second of the two guys pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges and enhancements for past crimes that could send him to state prison for eight years and leave him $201,000 lighter in the wallet.
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Robert Edward Smyrak of Anaheim and Larry James Allred of Walnut imported some 80 shipments of counterfeit Disney merchandise from China that, had the products been the real deal, would have fetched nearly $2 million.
In February 2011, U.S. Customs and Border Protection intercepted a package at LAX that was addressed to Smyrak. Inside, agents found more than 150 pounds of counterfeit Disney pins.
After an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations, as well as the Anaheim Police Department, Smyrak and Allred were arrested on April 14, 2011, and at that time they still has more than 91,000 fake pins.
Robert Edward Smyrak and Larry James Allred: Two Knuckleheads Bootlegged Disney Pins
The duo had planned to pass them off as official Disney merchandise online for about a buck a pin, when the official collectible pin price range is $6.95 to $14.95.
By the way, anyone else wonder if the same Chinese slaves make the real and knock-off Disney pins?
Smyrak, 54, pleaded guilty on Sept. 29,
2011, to one felony count of trademark infringement and was sentenced
to a year in jail, three years of formal probation and ordered to pay
restitution. Allred, 58, won't be getting off as lightly.
He pleaded guilty to a court offer of one
felony count of trademark infringement with sentencing enhancements for
property loss over $200,000 and admitted a 1975 prior strike conviction
for rape and a 1978 prior strike conviction for kidnapping and rape. He
is to be sentenced July 15 in Santa Ana.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.