By Nicholas Brown
Staff Writer

A former Hooksett Youth Athletic Association president is charged with selling $380,000 worth of counterfeit computer hardware used by two nuclear power laboratories.

Charges filed in U.S. District Court on Dec. 7 accuse Mark Brunelle, of 355 Hackett Hill Road, of dealing computer goods artificially packaged as new Compaq products.

According to the U.S. Attorney's charges, the goods were sold by Brunelle's Bow-based company, Hardware 4 Less, through a series of vendors, and ended up being used by two U.S. Department of Energy atomic power facilities - one in Syracuse, N.Y., and another in West Mifflin, Pa.

The maximum sentence for the trafficking in counterfeit goods charge, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gunnison, is 10 years imprisonment and a $2 million fine.

Brunelle is accused of displaying Compaq's trademark logo on Hardware 4 Less signs, business cards and Web site - all without approval from the computer company.

Brunelle is also accused of contracting a Manchester printing company to create phony Compaq warranties stationery, acquiring boxes bearing the Compaq logo, and instructing employees to place imitation labels, serial numbers and build dates on the products.

The U.S. Attorney's charge also says that the atomic power facilities questioned the authenticity of some of the computer hardware in 2002, and that Brunelle responded with a fraudulent letter bearing the Compaq logo and a Munich, Germany, address.

A 2002 Compaq press release says U.S. Marshals seized counterfeit memory boards, hard drives, Compaq labels, packing materials, warranty booklets and software licenses from the Hardware 4 Less premises.

The release said also that Compaq was pursuing several other companies with court injunctions, and that it had recently implemented security labels on some hardware products.

Brunelle has been involved with coaching girls soccer in Hooksett, and is a past president of the Hooksett Youth Athletic Association soccer club. Neither Brunelle nor his attorney, Steven Gordon, of Shaheen and Gordon in Concord, could be reached by press time.