The owner of a New Jersey technology company has been charged with allegedly duping state and local public safety agencies into spending at least $35 million on banned Chinese surveillance camera equipment.

According to a complaint unveiled last week and first reported by the independent tech website 404 Media, the New Jersey-based Packetalk’s owner allegedly lied to the state agencies in order to get their money. The total included $15 million in federal COVID-19 relief money.

Jason Koebler, co-founder of the 404 Media journalism site, said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News that the technology had been first banned for human rights reasons and then those involving national security.

“They were initially banned because Dahua [Technology] was found to be using their surveillance cameras in Xinjiang in China in Uyghur prison camps,” Koebler said, referring to the Chinese manufacturer.

“About a year later, in 2021, the FCC banned these cameras…into the U.S. in general, because they may be phoning [law enforcement information] back to China. There’s been a lot of Chinese surveillance tech companies that have been banned by the federal government. We don’t know specifically how and why and where and which ones are sending information back to China,” he said.