Florida Couple Sentenced for Scheme to Avoid AD/CVD on Chinese Plywood

A Florida husband and wife were each sentenced to 57 months in prison on Feb. 14 for illegally avoiding customs duties and violating the Lacey Act on between $25 million and $65 million worth of plywood products, DOJ announced. Noel and Kelsy Hernandez Quintana also were ordered to pay, "jointly and severally, $42,417,318.50 in forfeitures, as well as $1,630,324.46 in storage costs incurred by the government" after the couple "declined to abandon" the plywood seized by the government, DOJ said.

An employee of the Quintanas', Marta Angelbello, was sentenced to three years of probation, including 90 days of home detention, and a $3,000 fine.

From 2016 to 2020, the Quintanas and Angelbello carried out a scheme to evade antidumping and countervailing duties on hardwood plywood from China by "falsely declaring the species, country of origin or country of harvest of the wood from which the plywood was made," DOJ said. The scheme saw the plywood shipped from China to Malaysia or Sri Lanka, where it was transferred to new containers to hide the goods' Chinese origin when sent on to the U.S. The goods should have been assessed an 8% AD and a CVD of over 200%.

In one instance the DOJ cited, the Quintanas said in a July 2018 declaration that plywood in three containers was made in Russia, although the containers were made and loaded in Qingdao, China, and sent to Port Everglades, Florida, via the Panama Canal without stopping in Russia. After this practice was shuttered, the Quintanas shipped Chinese-made plywood to Malaysia, where it was then transshipped.

The couple incorporated seven companies in the U.S. to use as shell companies to import hundreds of plywood shipments. A separate company also was created to serve as a financial shell firm through which the Quintanas accepted payments from purchasers, DOJ said.