This sounds like a lot of things were going wrong. Okay, first you had the guy committing fraud.
But why is the military sourcing its network hardware from random small resellers off Amazon? Like, even if the hardware were authentic, that seems like a route for potential trouble.
And it sounds like questionable stuff is getting into Cisco's official supply chains, too:
That same year, Al Palladin, Cisco's legal director of global brand protection, told CRN that even authentic Cisco channel partners were acquiring products outside of Cisco-authorized means because it was faster.