Federal investigators say the high-end look at Dutti Fashion on Milwaukee’s south side was too good to be true. Now the man they tied to the shop, Ahmad Yousef Jumaa Abulawi, has signed a plea agreement to plead guilty to a federal charge of trafficking in counterfeit goods.
The deal is the latest turn in a yearslong investigation that dates back to 2017 and culminated in a May 2025 search of the Mitchell Street store. During that raid, agents carted out boxes of suspected fake merchandise, including clothing, wallets, hats and watches. The plea agreement was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
Court filings show Abulawi agreed to resolve one federal trafficking count, according to WISN. Investigators labeled evidence boxes with designer names and seized thousands of items tied to the business. Prosecutors say the counterfeit goods carried a total value of about $385,624.31, and they estimate that if everything had been genuine it would have been worth more than $2.1 million. Plea and sentencing dates have not yet been set, according to the filings.
What The May 2025 Raid Turned Up
Homeland Security Investigations and U.S. Customs and Border Protection executed search warrants at Dutti Fashion in May 2025 as part of a multiagency probe into imported knockoffs. Court records and reporting describe a long-running effort that included undercover buys, tracking international shipments and even rifling through trash at a second location, Jordan River Fashion, in search of counterfeit merchandise.
Photographs included in the warrants show evidence boxes marked with designer labels like Dolce & Gabbana, Louis Vuitton and Burberry, as reported by TMJ4.
Customs specialists traced multiple overseas shipments addressed to people connected with the two stores going back to 2017. Records reviewed by local outlets show intercepted shipments that would have been worth roughly $1.6 million at retail if authentic. In one April 2020 seizure, agents identified dozens of counterfeit Rolex watches with a suggested retail price near $966,800, according to reporting by FOX6 Milwaukee. Those import records and undercover purchases formed a big part of the trafficking case federal prosecutors brought.
Plea Terms And Legal Exposure
The federal trafficking count Abulawi agreed to resolve carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $2,000,000 fine under federal law, according to the court filing cited by WISN. The plea papers list seized property, business records and cellphones from the May 2025 search and include the government’s valuation estimates of the recovered items.
A formal change-of-plea hearing has not yet appeared on the public calendar, and a sentencing date will be set after the court accepts the agreement.
Business Fallout And What Comes Next
Dutti Fashion’s storefront on Historic Mitchell Street has stayed dark since the federal raid, and business records list Abulawi as the registered agent for the company, according to the Better Business Bureau listing. Jordan River Fashion on West North Avenue was identified in search warrants as a second location tied to the same investigation.
Federal prosecutors and investigators have not issued a public statement about the plea. For now, the federal docket in the Eastern District of Wisconsin will provide the next official clues about where the case is headed.
Hoodline previously covered the 2025 search warrants and on-the-ground response; see our earlier on-the-scene raid coverage. We will continue to track court filings for a scheduled change-of-plea hearing and any additional federal actions.
