The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of May 8-14:

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of May 1-7:

A federal grand jury in Puerto Rico indicted Chinese national Shuyi Mo on April 26 for fraud by wire and conspiracy to commit offense to defraud the U.S., CBP announced on May 4. Mo is the manager of a China-based supplier, Neviews Development Co. Ltd. According to the news release, Neviews conspired with a U.S. importer in Puerto Rico to "transship procelan mosaic tiles from China through Malaysia to circumvent antidumping and countervailing duties of approximately 718%," the release said. This scheme led to a revenue loss of approximately $1.1 million for the U.S. government, CBP said.

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of April 24-30.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland dismissed a suit from fireworks importer Jake's Fireworks concerning the Consumer Product Safety Commission's determination that the company's "Excalibur" line of fireworks constitutes a banned hazardous substance under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act. Judge Theodore Chuang said the CPSC's notices of noncompliance do not amount to final agency action, depriving Jake's Fireworks of the right to challenge the notices as having violated the Administrative Procedure Act (Jake's Fireworks v. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, D. Md. 2023)

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the weeks of April 10-16 and 17-23.

Fabian Humberto Tovar Caicedo, a former Colombian Army intelligence officer, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his role in a conspiracy to distribute cocaine for import into the U.S. Tovar Caicedo offered certain "corrupt services" to a drug trafficking organization, including the provision of police in Colombia's Port of Santa Marta that that were willing to "facilitate the export of cocaine in exchange for payment," DOJ said April 25.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld CBP's decision not to grant credit to customs broker license exam test taker Byungmin Chae of Elkhorn, Nebraska, for two questions on the April 2018 exam. Judges Pauline Newman, Sharon Prost and Todd Hughes granted Chae credit for one of three questions he challenged, but that was insufficient to bring him up to the 75% threshold needed to pass the test.

Importer SXP Schulz Xtruded Products needed a protest to properly challenge CBP's failure to apply a Section 232 duty exclusion on four entries of its steel forged and turned bars, the Court of International Trade ruled. Dismissing the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves held that SXP could have filed for an extension of liquidation while it was waiting for the Commerce Department to correct the erroneous exclusion it issued or simply have filed a protest, which would have queued up jurisdiction under Section 1581(a).

A recent False Claims Act case brought over unpaid marking duties on imports of Mifeprex, the active ingredient for the abortion pill mifepristone, was filed by the Life Legal Defense Foundation in a bid to "take some gold out of Egypt," the foundation's lawyer Catherine Short told Trade Law Daily. "This company is making drugs that kill babies, and we were able to cut away some of their profit from that," Short said.