A man who imported and sold made-in-China, counterfeit San Diego Chargers Manti Teo jerseys is going to jail for six months.
Greg M. Hayama, owner of sports memorabilia retailer Pride of Hawaii Sports, pleaded guilty in August to smuggling and trafficking counterfeit goods and conspiring to smuggle and traffic counterfeit goods.
U.S. District Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi sentenced Hayama on Monday to the six-month jail term followed by six months of home detention. She also ordered Hayama to pay $7,006 in restitution to an alliance of sports licensing organizations, of which NFL Properties is a member.
Kobayashi is giving Hayama, who has since closed his business and moved to the mainland, until after the holidays to turn himself in to begin serving his sentence.
Hayama admitted that he smuggled from China 147 San Diego Chargers jerseys in June 2013 and sold 30 of them to Teo’s father, Brian.
According to a December 2015 grand jury indictment, Hayama complained to his supplier in an email, “All light blue jerseys rip apart from the bottom of the arm (p)it to the bottom of the jersey, stitching is too thin and material rips from the stitching!”
Hayama also admitted to selling 50 counterfeit sports jerseys to his co-conspirator, Arnold Cariaga, and to possessing 412 counterfeit college football and other NFL team jerseys when law enforcement raided his Waianae home in October 2013.
Kobayashi sentenced Cariaga in October to five years of probation, fined him $3,000 and ordered him to pay a portion of the restitution owed to the sports licensing organizations alliance.
The government says Hayama had been smuggling counterfeit jerseys from China since at least 2009 and that U.S. Customs had even intercepted some of the shipments. In response Hayama had DHL Express, where Cariaga worked, handle the shipments. Hayama had the packages addressed to phony locations and phony addressees. Cariaga intercepted the packages and delivered them to Hayama.