PITTSBURGH (AP) – An Army veteran who made contacts with counterfeiters while serving in South Korea pleaded guilty Tuesday to trafficking in Asian-made knock-off jerseys that violated trademarks held by the National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and Philadelphia nostalgia sports apparel maker Mitchell & Ness.
Under federal sentencing guidelines, Anthony Powell, 47, of Pittsburgh, likely faces 12 to 18 months in prison when he is sentenced March 23 by a federal judge.
Authorities contend Powell sold thousands of jerseys from 2004 through 2008, though the counterfeit trademark trafficking charge he pleaded guilty to pertains only to an 11-day period in 2008 when investigators seized more than 100 jerseys Powell kept at his mother’s home and $258,000 in cash.
Under terms of his plea agreement, Powell will forfeit half of that money to the government and must use at least some of the other half to pay his back taxes and penalties. Powell’s attorney, Ronald Hayward, said the exact tax liability has yet to be determined, but his client can keep whatever money isn’t needed to cover that debt.
Hayward declined to comment further and Powell wouldn’t speak to reporters after the 90-minute change of plea hearing.
The case was brought by the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and state police.
Powell pleaded guilty to filing a fraudulent 2006 federal tax return by not listing income from the jersey sales. Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Hull said the parties have agreed that Powell owes somewhere between $30,000 and $80,000 in taxes for not disclosing his jersey income over all of the years in question.
Powell told the judge he manages a bar and sometimes works as a stagehand at the city’s Consol Energy Center.
Hull said he couldn’t say why prosecutors didn’t charge Powell for selling jerseys and evading taxes for the entire period in question. But it is not uncommon for prosecutors to negotiate about what charges will be filed in financial crime cases when the evidence – in this case, the jerseys – can’t be strictly accounted for and can only be estimated.
Powell began buying and re-selling the counterfeit jerseys from undisclosed suppliers while he was stationed in South Korea and continued to receive them – sometimes by falsifying customs documents – when he returned to Pittsburgh, Hull told the judge. He also had them mailed to other peoples’ addresses to avoid detection.
Powell bought the jerseys for $15 to $20 each and sold them for $30 to $50 apiece on Craigslist and eBay – until the online auction site “threw him off for selling the counterfeits,” Hull said.
Investigators reconstructed Powell’s business based on information he provided and concluded “he netted at least $24,000 a year from 2004” until his arrest in August 2008, Hull said.
That’s when a state trooper working with a federal ICE task force tracked a shipment of Powell’s jerseys and set up an undercover buy. Powell agreed to let agents search his mother’s home, where they found 167 jerseys. They later seized the money they were able to trace through eBay, PayPal and bank accounts Powell kept, Hull said.
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