Ebay trader sold hundreds of lethal airbags

A car parts dealer who has put hundreds of drivers at risk by selling £30,000 worth of potentially deadly car airbags on eBay has been spared jail.

Robert Czernik, 36, flogged hundreds of the cut price safety devices at £175 a go.

They fail to meet regulation standards and may fail to deploy properly in a crash, Inner London Crown Court heard.

Car company Honda were so concerned about the danger posed by replacement airbags that they tipped off the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit who investigated Czernik in November 2015.

Officers bought two airbags along with one airbag cover across three test and they were found to be counterfeit.

Differences with their genuine equivalents included the brand logo being attached in the wrong position, incorrect serial numbers attached and badly fitted covers which could come loose when deployed.

The fabric of the airbag itself was also discovered to have been ‘stuffed’ into the unit, rather than carefully packed, which could also have affected how quickly it was deployed in a crash.

Prosecutor Julia Faure-Walker said Czernik was selling the items for ‘substantially less’ than the genuine equivalent bags which retail for over £800 each.

A search of his Dorset home the following February revealed a mix of airbag covers and what appeared to be the actual fabric bags themselves.

Officers recovered 14 counterfeit airbags along with 110 fake airbag covers which would have been sold for more than £12,000, netting the trader a profit of around £10,000.

Had they been genuine items sold legitimately by the manufacturers, they would have fetched more than £67,000.

The court heard Army bomb disposal experts were also drafted in due to the explosive charges held inside the airbags.

There were also a string of covers bearing the names of 11 brands, but police were unable to confirm whether they were genuine or not.

Those included Honda, Toyota, Lexus, Audi, Vauxhall, Seat, Skoda, Volkswagen, and BMW.

Five of the Toyota ones all bore the same serial number, indicating they may have been reconstructed and may not have deployed properly if activated.

Following his arrest, the court heard Czernik told police ‘he did not think he was doing anything at all wrong’.

‘He said he never questioned whether items were genuine and did not really think about it,’ said Ms Faure-Walker.

But Czernik eventually pleaded guilty to two counts of selling goods likely to be mistaken for a registered trademark in what the prosecutor said was ‘believed to be the first UK prosecution for selling counterfeit airbags’.

A probe into his trading history revealed he had sold at least 100 similar components worth £29,000 online.

Ms Faure-Walker told the court Czernik’s experience in trading auto parts along with the fact that he had sold so may previously demonstrated there was ‘clearly a second market’ for them.

‘Members of the public would not have known, if they had gone into any of these entities, if they could have a fake airbag in their car,’ she said.

‘There is a problem in tracing where these airbags end up when they are sold.’

She added that many of the brands had expressed concerns that the items would not conform to industry standards and therefore ‘would not have been effective during a collision’.

In his basis of plea, Czernik said he had been involved in trading car parts for a number of years and believed assurances given to him by his Chinese suppliers that the products were genuine.

The judge, Mr Recorder Silas Reid, told him any trademark offences were serious in themselves, but added that his case was ‘particularly serious’ given they involved airbags.

‘Airbags are used and designed as a safety device which people hope to never have to rely on in their car,’ he said.

‘If they are relying on an airbag for protection, it is ordinarily because there has been a significant crash in which the airbag is there to stop injury – particularly head injury – against the steering wheel or dashboard in the car.’

Recorder Reid said that whether the fear they may not have deployed properly was an absolute certainty or not ‘seems not to matter’.

‘It has been pointed out that your trade in these items has been limited over the years, but if 100 airbags have been sold, then it may be the case that 100 cars are driving around without an airbag when there should be one in place,’ said the judge.

‘That, in my view, indicates how serious this business is.’

Czernik, of (5) Blackbird Close, Poole, Dorset, admitted two counts of selling goods likely to be mistaken for a registered trademark.

He was handed a five-month prison term, suspended for 12 months, and ordered to complete 135 hours of unpaid work.
ends