Man Pleads Guilty to Selling Defense Department $3.5 Million Worth of Bogus Fans

The Northern California man claimed the cooling equipment was new but in fact it was used and surplus. He could get 20 years.

U.S. Army soldiers with a Patriot surface-to-air missile battery during a NATO exercise at a Lithuania airbase on July 20, 2017. Mindaugas Kulbis/AP

A man in San Francisco’s East Bay sold the U.S. Defense Department $3.5 million worth of fan assemblies to cool down equipment that were counterfeit or misrepresented as new, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office press release.

Steve H.S. Kim, 63, of Alameda County pleaded guilty March 28 to defrauding the department’s Defense Logistics Agency (DLA).