Body Armor Company Owner Sentenced to Five Years in Prison

CLEVELAND – Vall Iliev, 70, of Stow, Ohio, has been sentenced to 63 months (5.25 years) in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Donald C. Nugent after he pleaded guilty in March to smuggling foreign-made body armor and then selling it to law enforcement agencies and other members of the public as legitimate, domestically-made certified products. Iliev was additionally ordered to serve three years of supervised release after imprisonment. Judge Nugent also ordered him to pay approximately $5.2 million in restitution.

According to court documents and testimony, in May 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at the Blaine, Washington port of entry (POE) intercepted a Canadian-registered truck found to be carrying more than 200 ballistic body armor plates in boxes originating from China. The plates were hidden using a technique known as “Master Carton Smuggling,” which is typically used in attempts to evade detection by POE officials. The pre-packaged boxes were concealed within a larger shipping container and pre-addressed to be delivered to Iliev’s home or his businesses, Vallmar Studios and ShotStop, in Stow.

Vallmar Studios was used as a warehouse to process the armor before being sold to law enforcement agencies and the general public through the ShotStop website. The armor was touted as American made and marked with labels as being certified by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). The NIJ is the research, development, and evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, which has published performance standards for ballistic-resistant police body armor for more than 50 years. Manufacturers and distributors are permitted to use the NIJ trademarked symbol if the products meet established standards for protection.

However, inspectors who examined the body armor found that none of the items from the Chinese manufacturers qualified to be NIJ-certified because approved manufacturers are only located within the United States. Federal investigators discovered that NIJ-certified and American-made labels on the armor were affixed to the products after arriving from China but before they were sold by ShotStop. Although the company’s advertising claimed that the products were NIJ-certified and made in Stow, Ohio, investigators learned that neither the Vallmar Studios nor the ShotStop facilities were equipped to manufacture body armor.

This case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Cleveland Office alongside the Ohio Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation with assistance from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Duncan T. Brown for the Northern District of Ohio.