Carced News
An Ohio Dealer Shipped Counterfeit Honda Airbags Labeled as Night Lights — Here's Why That Should Terrify Every Shopper
Saving money on a used car is one thing. Saving money on the one component that has to work perfectly in a crash is another story entirely.
This Is Not a Badge or a Wheel — It’s an Airbag
I’ll say the quiet part out loud: if you’re hunting for the cheapest possible used Honda, the savings only matter if the car still protects you when something goes wrong. Federal prosecutors just outlined a case that cuts straight through that bargain-hunter logic. An Ohio dealer admitted to trafficking counterfeit airbags presented as genuine Honda parts, imported from China with paperwork that literally described the boxes as “desktop night lights.”
How the Scheme Unfolded
According to the Department of Justice, John Bojorquez pleaded guilty to trafficking in counterfeit goods tied to activity from August 2024 through May 2025, involving at least 44 airbags. Customs at Chicago O’Hare intercepted one shipment of 20 counterfeits with that night-light description on the manifest; additional shipments used the same labeling trick. When agents searched the dealership in May 2025, they found more counterfeits — some piled in a clothes hamper under a towel.
Why Counterfeit Airbags Are a Different Category of Risk
NHTSA has been blunt about this for years: fake airbags may fail to inflate, inflate partially, or eject metal fragments when they do deploy. You won’t spot the problem on a test drive. You won’t hear it in the engine bay. The failure mode is silent until the one moment you can’t afford a surprise.
What Shoppers Should Do
If you bought from the dealer involved, follow the public guidance to contact the U.S. Attorney’s Office hotline listed in the case filings. More broadly, any used purchase — especially from independent lots — deserves a pre-sale inspection that includes verifying recall completion and airbag module identifiers when possible. On Carced we focus on incentives on new metal, but this story is a reminder that “cheap used” and “safe used” aren’t always the same sentence.
My Take
Ten years max on the sentence table won’t undo a deployment failure for someone who trusted the badge on the steering wheel. The supply-chain games here — night lights on the customs form, genuine Honda branding on the bag — are infuriating because they’re designed to exploit exactly the buyer who can least afford a mistake. Treat airbag history as non-negotiable due diligence, not a footnote.
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