A Wyandotte County business has been ordered to pay $30,000 in penalties for allegedly selling counterfeit e-cigarette products, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said today.
Vinodbhai Patel, operator of Jay Ganesh, LLC, and the company were ordered to pay $30,000 in civil penalties in a consent judgment approved Tuesday in Wyandotte County District Court by Judge Constance Alvey. The defendants also were ordered to reimburse $1,912.50, the cost of the attorney general’s investigation into their business practices.
Patel is a resident of Johnson County, and the business is located in Bonner Springs, according to court documents.
The attorney general alleged that the defendants knowingly misled consumers by falsely representing e-cigarette products to be authentic branded merchandise when in fact they were not. The alleged counterfeit products involved in this case included vaping devices and vaping liquids.
In the consent judgment, the defendants did not admit that there was a violation of the Kansas Consumer Protection Act.
The consumer-protection judgment is the third reached by Schmidt’s office in the past six months addressing counterfeit e-cigarette products discovered by the attorney general’s Tobacco Enforcement Unit.
In September 2020, Veneeth Kanti, Gayatri Kanti and Morani, Inc., doing business as Logan 66, were ordered to pay $7,500 in civil penalties and the costs of the attorney general’s investigation in a case filed in Franklin County.
In October 2020, Aaron Dune and Smoke Stax, LLC, were ordered to pay $5,000 in civil penalties and the costs of the attorney general’s investigation in a case filed in Sedgwick County.
Additional investigations into counterfeit vaping products remain pending, according to the attorney general’s office. Copies of the consent judgments can be found at www.InYourCornerKansas.org/judgments.