A Paramount-based clothing company whose executive admitted to undervaluing imported garments in a scheme to avoid paying millions in customs fees — all while conducting business with a woman tied to the Sinaloa Cartel — has been ordered by the government to pay a penalty of more than $10 million.
Ghacham Inc., which does business under the name “Platini,” according to authorities, was fined $4 million by a federal judge and ordered to pay $6.39 million in restitution after pleading guilty in December 2022 to one count of conspiracy to pass false and fraudulent papers through a customhouse and one count of conspiracy to engage in any transaction or dealing in properties of a specially designated narcotics trafficker under a statute known as the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.
In addition, the company was placed on five years of probation where they must establish an anti-money laundering compliance and ethics program that will be reviewed by the court each year, according to authorities.
“The company flouted the Kingpin Act, doing business with members of a money laundering network used by … two of the world’s most notorious drug traffickers,” prosecutors handling the case argued in a sentencing memorandum, according to a statement from the Department of Justice. “It cheated taxpayers out of millions, both to save itself money and to secure an unfair edge against its competition in the Southern California garment market.
“And it did so through a sustained, extensive effort over the course of more than a decade.”
Officials said that from July 2011 to February 2021, the clothing company undervalued imported garments by more than $32 million and failed to pay roughly $6.4 million in customs duties.
The company’s executive, Mohamed Ghacham, had Chinese suppliers prepare two separate invoices for the clothing company: a real one that reflected the actual price paid for the goods imported from China and a fraudulent customs invoice that stated the undervalued price.
When making its way through customs, officials said the company submitted the fraudulent invoices to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and kept the real invoices in its own accounting records.
During this time, the company was also conducting business with Maria Tiburcia Cazarez Perez, a woman who was previously designated as being on the Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers sanctions list for her connection to the Sinaloa Cartel’s money laundering crimes and is currently serving out a 15-year federal prison sentence for drug trafficking, according to authorities.
Ghacham has since pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to pass false and fraudulent papers through a customhouse, officials said. He will be sentenced in the coming months, they added.