Man convicted of selling $200,000 in fake Disney pins

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A Southern California man was convicted Wednesday of illegally importing thousands of counterfeit Disney collectibles and selling them online, Orange County prosecutors said.

Larry James Allred, 58, pleaded guilty to a court offer of one felony count of trademark infringement, with an expected sentence of eight years in state prison and $201,000 in restitution, according to a statement from the Orange Country district attorney’s office.

He faces sentencing enhancements because the property loss was more than $200,000 and because of previous convictions for rape in 1975 and for kidnapping and rape in 1978, prosecutors said. He will be sentenced in July.

Prosecutors said Allred, a Walnut resident, concocted a scheme with Robert Edward Smyrak from January 2010 to April 2011, in which they would send legitimate collectible Disney pins to a manufacturer in China to be replicated and shipped back to them.

The pair would then sell the counterfeit pins online, passing them off as legitimate.

Prosecutors said the men sold nearly 1 million counterfeit items on online auction sites in bulk quantities averaging less than $1 per pin. A legitimate pin would typically range from $6.95 to $14.95.

The operation was discovered in February 2011, when customs agents intercepted a parcel at Los Angeles International Airport addressed to Smyrak that had more than 150 pounds of the fake pins, prosecutors said.

Allred and Smyrak were arrested in April 2011 by Anaheim police, and had more than 90,000 pins in their possession at the time of the arrest, prosecutors said. Smyrak, 54, pleaded guilty in September 2011 to one felony count of trademark infringement. He was sentenced to one year in jail, three years of formal probation and restitution.

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-- Rick Rojas