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Timothy Weatherly of Overland Park, Kan., will be spending the next two years in  a federal prison for his role in the importation of fake networking equipment he and his partner passed off as genuine Cisco gear.

As the Kansas City Business Journal reported, Weatherly admitted to complicity in importing of fake equipment from Hong Kong and then relabeling them for sale as Cisco equipment. Authorities say he and his partner, Christopher Myers, sold more than $1 million of the bogus networking appliances through their company, Direct Deals Inc.

Myers, of Leawood, Kan., was sentenced in July to 33 months in prison for his role in the fake Cisco gear scheme.

The pair worked with a Hong Kong company to produce the equipment. The two used pilfered serial numbers and faux bevels to give the equipment the appearance of genuine product. They even recreated the technical manuals.

The counterfeiting ring had been in operation for more than a year – 2005 to late 2006. The equipment brought to the U.S. was sold through eBay. When authorizes caught on to the scheme, they found hundreds of unsold fake units in their warehouse.

Cisco is a chronic target of counterfeit equipment schemes. In the past year alone, several new cases have been opened and prosecutors have won convictions for older cases.

While the direct impact of these cases is isolated to the end users who bought the fake gear, such schemes weaken the indirect channel by giving customers reason to doubt the veracity of the products they’re buying.