Los Angeles-area man sentenced for trafficking thousands of DVDs with counterfeit Dolby trademarks

LOS ANGELES – An Arcadia man has been sentenced to serve a year and a day in federal prison for trafficking in more than 30,000 DVDs bearing the counterfeit trademarks of Dolby Laboratory Licensing Corporation, a company responsible for sound quality in many theatrical movies and DVD releases.

Jackie Weisheng Chen, 48, was sentenced Monday by U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess, who ordered the defendant to begin serving his prison term by Jan. 4, 2013. The conviction stems from a probe by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Chen was the owner of Temia Media, a retail store in Monterey Park. The store sold counterfeit movies from China, some of which were compilation disks featuring Chinese and American-made movies with actors such as Jet Li and Jackie Chan.

The investigation in this case began two years ago when U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized three shipments containing nearly 5,000 DVDs with counterfeit Dolby trademarks. After the third shipment was seized and two previous notices by CBP had failed to stop the unlawful conduct, HSI obtained a search warrant for Temia Media. During the search in January 2011, HSI special agents seized nearly 25,000 DVDs with counterfeit Dolby trademarks. At that time, the special agent explained to Chen and an employee that the DVDs had counterfeit Dolby trademarks.

Despite being warned about the counterfeit Dolby trademarks, Chen and the employee re-stocked their shelves and continued to sell the same DVDs with the same counterfeit Dolby trademarks. In response, federal special agents again searched the store in May 2011 and seized an additional 3,000 DVDs with counterfeit Dolby trademarks. Chen and his co-conspirator were then arrested and charged. The employee was convicted in January and sentenced in late April to probation.