Ohio body armor smuggler gets jail time, $5M fine

A federal district judge in Ohio on Tuesday sentenced Vall Iliev, 70, to over 5 years in prison for smuggling foreign-made body armor and selling it to law enforcement as U.S.-made. The judge also ordered Iliev to serve three years of supervised release after his prison term and pay about $5.2 million in restitution, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for northern Ohio.

What did Iliev do? He owned two businesses—Vallmar Studios, a warehouse that processed the body armor, and ShotStop in Stow, Ohio, where he sold the products. Iliev smuggled Chinese-made armor into the United States, then affixed labels indicating it was American-made and certified by the National Institute of Justice. The certification, which guarantees that body armor meets national standards for ballistic protection, is only granted to American companies, according to the attorney’s office.

How did law enforcement catch him? U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at a port of entry in Blaine, Wash., in 2023 searched a Canadian-registered truck. They discovered more than 200 prepackaged ballistic body armor plates hidden inside a larger container. The boxes, originating from China, were addressed to Iliev and his businesses. Federal investigators found that Iliev’s facilities were not capable of manufacturing body armor as he claimed.

Dig deeper: Read my report on charges against 10 people who allegedly attacked an ICE facility in Texas.