Michael Kyereme pled guilty to charges of mail fraud and tax evasion.

Michael Kyereme of Piscataway - New Jersey, pled guilty to charges of mail fraud and tax evasion.In his mail fraud guilty plea, Kyereme admitted defrauding Cisco out of $6.9 million in replacement parts by scamming the Cisco SMARTnet Service program.
Here is how Kyereme's SMARTnet scam worked:As an independent contractor hired to provide information technology support to the City of Newark, Kyereme was responsible for assisting Newark employees when computer problems arose that required technical support or trouble-shooting by a computer technician.
If it was determined that a computer related problem could not be solved without outside assistance or a replacement part, Kyereme was authorized to contact Cisco for technical assistance and if necessary, to request a replacement part under Cisco SMARTnet. Starting in January 2003, Kyereme would falsely claim that certain Cisco parts in the City of Newark's computer systems were malfunctioning and thus required replacement. In response to those numerous requests, Cisco sent approximately 280 replacement parts to Kyereme on behalf of the City of Newark. Instead of installing the parts into the City of Newark's computer system, Kyereme would sell the parts to a third party in California, pocket the illicit proceeds and return parts of lesser value to Cisco. In all, Kyereme failed to return 148 parts to Cisco and of the approximately 132 parts that he did return, only 33 of those parts matched the type of part originally sent by Cisco to Kyereme.It is interesting to note that upon his arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on March 2 - 2007, Kyereme had $3 million in stolen Cisco parts stashed within his home and car.In his tax evasion guilty plea, Kyereme admitted to not reporting $1.24 million of income that he illicitly derived from the sale of stolen Cisco parts.Sentencing is scheduled for November, meanwhile Kyereme remains free on a $500,000 bail bond.Kyereme faces up to 25 years in prison and fines of $350,000.