Houston man pleads guilty to plans to sell $317 million fake masks to the Australian state Reuters

Author: Jonathan Stampel

(Reuters)-U.S. prosecutors said that a Texas man admitted to participating in a plan to fraudulently sell 50 million N95 masks that he did not have to the New South Wales government of Australia for $317.6 million.

On Tuesday, Arabel Doolittle defended a conspiracy charge of wire fraud before US District Judge Lynn Hughes in Houston.

The prosecutor said that Doolittle and co-defendant Pascal Eleanya tried to sell 3M brand masks at five times the list price, hoping to raise US$275 million, and the rest would be given to their “agents” and Xinnan. Representative of the Welsh State Government.

An indictment last November stated that the U.S. Secret Service disbanded the transaction before it was completed.

Doolittle from Houston faces up to five years in prison in the scheduled sentence on October 25 and has been detained until then.

The federal public defender representing Doolittle did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

The charges against Eleanya are still pending. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Doolittle separately pleaded guilty to wire fraud in connection with plans to defraud investors in oil and gas transactions.

In that case, the prosecutor agreed to suggest that he should serve four years in prison in addition to being sentenced in the mask case.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, 3M, the world’s largest manufacturer of N95 masks, has been working hard to prevent price fraud and other improper sales of its masks, including filing 36 lawsuits and confiscating more than 41 million counterfeit masks.

In a statement, the St. Paul, Minnesota-based company expressed satisfaction with the plea and appreciated the U.S. Department of Justice’s efforts to prevent people from illegally using the demand for its masks.