NCDOT employee accused of selling counterfeit airbags

Thirty-one-year-old Mateen Mohammad Alinaghian, 31, of Raleigh, recently plead guilty to charges of importing thousands of counterfeit car steering wheel airbags into the Triangle area over the past two years. Alinaghian was an engineer for the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) led the investigation, along with the US Department of Transportation, and the Office of Inspector General. Court documents show Alinaghian imported 2,500 counterfeit air bags between May 2022 and April 2024 that had counterfeit markings of Honda, Chevrolet, General Motor, and Toyota.

The case is outlined in a press release from the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina, the Department of Homeland Security, and was discussed at the recent Council of State meeting. North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall told Council of State members at a recent meeting how her office’s Trademark Enforcement Division or Anti-Counterfeit Task Force assisted in the case.

“We work a lot with legitimate manufacturers, and they have private investigators, so our contacts with General Motors and Honda led us to locate this person here in northern Wake County and found a large number of counterfeit, I think it was more like a distribution Center for the East Coast,” she said. “Always in these counterfeit cases, you like to go back to the source of the chain you’re interested in, where the money is going because sometimes it’s involved in organized crime, terrorism, or what have you. Those are the kinds of leads that the Feds follow because we simply don’t have the ability to do that.”

The source was traced back to London, and a person on Marshall’s staff traveled there to assist the City of London Intellectual Property Crime Unit with the search of two residences and businesses and seized over 500 counterfeit airbags and significant cash.

“Selling counterfeit airbags has tremendously serious and dangerous consequences if they don’t deploy all of the safety factors that they were intended to have,” Marshall said. “If they deployed with toxic goods or shrapnel-like things, that’s also a safety and health issue. So, this is an example of our strong partnerships, federal, state, local, and now international, that have worked together to take a very, very serious product off the market and interdict this thing that will save lives, so we’re just very pleased with that, recognition.”

According to the office of the US Attorney for the Eastern District, vehicle owners who suspect they purchased a counterfeit airbag should consult their brand’s dealership to determine if the parts need to be replaced, and report it to their local Homeland Security Investigations office or submit an online complaint to the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Marshall also reminded members that the due date for filing business renewals is April 15. Last year, the state had more than 715,000 annual renewals compared to 458,000 in 2019, a 58% increase or more than double in five years.

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