In Pasadena, California, there’s a cute purple brick courtyard the place one storefront isn’t like the remainder. The glass doorways open onto a sparse industrial hallway, which results in a sunlit lobby with a big spiral staircase. Go up, and also you’ll see a typical coworking area: open tables, wholesome snacks, a set of assembly rooms with glass partitions. Observe one hallway a lot of the means again, and also you’ll discover Workplace 18.
There are not any indicators of life on this tiny personal workplace that’s imagined to be the headquarters of Odyssey Robotic, an upstart US drone firm. We noticed three small desks and chairs, however no energy strips, no displays, no keyboards or chargers or decorations. Two of the desks have been coated with sealed cardboard packages.
This room is the newest proof: The FCC’s ban on foreign-made drones is a nasty joke.
On December twenty second, 2025, the US authorities claimed — with no shred of public proof — that overseas client drones posed an unacceptable risk to nationwide safety. With the assistance of different companies, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr banned all future foreign drones from coming into the nation with no particular new waiver.
Like with Carr’s make-it-make-sense consumer internet router ban, that waiver has nothing to do with the safety of those merchandise. The appliance consists of zero questions on limiting or bettering the know-how itself.
As an alternative, it provides Carr and President Donald Trump the ability to resolve losers and winners whereas beating the “America First” drum. Overseas firms must submit an in depth plan to construct their merchandise within the US, together with how a lot they intend to put money into US manufacturing — yet US-based Netgear got a waiver from the router ban although it made no dedication to provide gadgets outdoors Asia.
Shopper drones are successfully all made in China, and as of April, it appeared that nobody deliberate to vary that because of the FCC’s overseas drone ban. Although some US dronemakers exist, they’re pursuing a special and extra profitable alternative: drones that spy and kill.
However Workplace 18 reveals one other gaping gap within the FCC’s plan. As an alternative of making new US client drone firms, it’s incentivizing faux ones as an alternative.
How straightforward is it to idiot the FCC? Simply lie on the paperwork, it appears.
Simply whip up a brand new firm that pretends to construct brand-new drones within the USA and depend on nobody noticing — even when your drones clearly use proprietary DJI wi-fi tech.
DJI, the world’s greatest drone firm, didn’t dominate drones simply due to first-mover advantage. It was know-how. DJI’s OcuSync and older Lightbridge real-time video transmission techniques have been and are probably the most dependable long-range, low-latency methods to remotely management a consumer-grade drone. Nearly each time The Verge has examined one other model, the sign hasn’t been as dependable. It’s a aggressive benefit that DJI wouldn’t simply share.
However OcuSync has a telltale fingerprint. It makes use of particular pairs of radio frequencies, pairs that seem within the FCC’s databases.
When software program developer and journalist Konrad Iturbe started watching FCC databases for these frequencies, he realized that DJI was getting ready to play a grand sport of Whac-A-Mole in the USA. Effectively forward of the December 2025 drone ban, a number of recent firms had immediately appeared promoting barely disguised variations of DJI know-how. He dubbed them “DJI front companies.”
One of the vital distinguished DJI clones to enter the US was Skyrover, which launched a price range drone that was a useless ringer for the DJI Mini 4 Professional. Final July, DJI wouldn’t affirm or deny to The Verge that “Skyrover” was a disguised version of its own drone, although safety researchers confirmed its app included DJI code.
Then, in October, Iturbe helped us introduce you to Xtra, the corporate that lets DJI sneak its standard cameras into the US. Once we examined an Xtra digital camera versus a DJI digital camera, we discovered them so an identical, it eliminated any doubt. Once more, DJI wouldn’t affirm or deny.
Consequently, US residents have been nonetheless capable of buy DJI tech — solely now, they have been coping with fly-by-night companies, with no actual assure of assist sooner or later.
This June, Iturbe found probably the most brazen try but. The DJI fingerprint led him to the FCC filings for a corporation named Odyssey Robotic, which does enterprise as Galiview Tech. In March, it turned the primary DJI-equipped drone model to get FCC approval for the reason that drone ban started. DJI didn’t reply to requests for remark for this story.
If Galiview was attempting to cover the DJI connection, it didn’t strive very exhausting: The corporate’s web site even listed DJI’s trademarked OcuSync tech as a Galiview function.
Wasn’t stopping clandestine Chinese language {hardware} the entire level of the ban? How may the FCC approve this drone?
Easy: On February sixth, a “Randolph Howard Eason” declared on an FCC kind that Odyssey Robotic’s drone and controller have been made in the USA, and no person ever questioned that earlier than rubber-stamping its software.
The FCC may have noticed the OcuSync frequencies, or that this supposedly US-manufactured gadget was examined by a Chinese language lab, or that it used a Chinese language-made antenna additionally utilized by one other Chinese language drone.
Nevertheless it’s simpler than that. Odyssey Robotic declared that its drone was designed, developed, and manufactured at 21 Miller Alley Suite 210 in Pasadena, California. Even a basic Google search can show you that’s not the handle of a manufacturing unit — it’s a coworking area referred to as Industrious that explicitly prohibits members from manufacturing something onsite.
Odyssey Robotic additionally declared that its drones are assembled at eTak Worldwide Company in Grand Prairie, Texas. With 80,000 sq. toes of warehouse area and 15 loading docks, you might theoretically construct drones there. However once more, a primary Google search would present you that eTak isn’t an assembler; it’s a recycling firm that collects e-waste, including old batteries, then types and dismantles them.
Nonetheless, we wished to make certain. We referred to as up the receptionist on the coworking area in Pasadena; they confirmed that Odyssey Robotic was actively renting a two-person personal workplace. Official California enterprise information claimed the corporate was working out of Workplace 18. You already know the remainder: We discovered a lonely room with three unused desks topped with cardboard packages.
If the FCC had ever seen the web site for these drones, it may have discovered much more eyebrow-raising contradictions. The web site claimed that “Galiview Inc.” was based in 2022 and headquartered in San Francisco, even because it supplied a Las Vegas telephone quantity and a Pasadena handle.
“Based mostly within the coronary heart of San Francisco’s know-how innovation hub, we’ve been pushing the boundaries of what’s potential in client drone know-how,” it claimed.
In actuality, public information present that Galiview is just not an organization. It’s a trademark of Odyssey Robotic, LLC, which was shaped in Delaware in January 2025 and registered in California final December, after what looks like an aborted try to name the model “Flyon” as an alternative. Different trademark filings from February 2026 present it planning at the very least three merchandise: a Galiview Titan, Galiview Venus, and Galiview Nova.
The corporate by no means replied to my emails to contact@flyondrone.com, the one and solely e-mail handle it has supplied publicly. We discovered its solely telephone quantity disconnected: “The subscriber you could have dialed is just not in service.”
eTak Worldwide, the recycler, additionally wasn’t answering emails or selecting up the telephone. “Sorry, however the person’s mailbox can’t settle for any extra messages,” I heard again and again. We had no higher luck with “iNet Professional,” an earlier firm from eTak’s founder that claimed to supply wholesale pc components. Each time I attempted the corporate’s telephone tree, the reply was all the time a robotic “Nobody is offered.”
However after I realized iNet Professional was simply half-hour from my home, I made a decision to pay it a go to.
The constructing was locked, however by means of the window I noticed one thing unusual. The first ornament was an almost floor-to-ceiling advertising picture for a smartphone display screen protector from 2014, from an organization referred to as Rudaor. It seems that iNet tried to turn into a US distributor, judging by the roughly 300 views on YouTube. On the home windows of iNet’s workplace, there have been additionally indicators for Hirutech USA, the defunct US arm of a Taiwanese electronics enterprise improvement agency that after occupied the identical handle.
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The entire constructing was a time capsule — and but, it’s nonetheless getting a number of shipments from abroad, together with on July fifteenth, according to import records collected by ImportYeti.
eTak’s founder has a historical past of lending out his enterprise handle, I assumed.
However after I lastly stumble throughout a cellular phone quantity for Richard Lee, founding father of eTak and iNet Professional, he says he’d by no means heard of Odyssey Robotic till every week or so earlier.
“I’m completely happy you referred to as me, as a result of we completely do not know what’s occurring,” Lee informed me on July thirteenth. “Why are folks utilizing our firm identify to do this sort of factor? It’s form of ridiculous.”
Once I present him Odyssey Robotic’s sworn attestation that eTak assembles its drones, he says it will need to have picked his handle out of a search engine.
“No, we don’t assemble something, we solely refurbish,” he says after I ask, including that eTak doesn’t have the manpower. He says he’s recycled batteries for Taiwanese pc maker Wistron (which builds laptops for giants like HP and Dell), UV ink cartridges for Anker, and vacuums for Ecovacs, however he’s by no means had a relationship with dronemaker DJI.
“They’re an enormous firm, they won’t select us,” he says. “In the event that they use our firm identify, it’s not honest for us, it’s not proper.”
However whoever’s behind Odyssey Robotic is more likely to get away with the lies.
Since 2023, each overseas firm promoting wi-fi devices in the USA has theoretically wanted an additional human within the loop, based mostly in the USA. That February is when the FCC added the requirement for a “US agent” who it may possibly legally serve papers to, and talk with, so the FCC can implement towards an organization that is likely to be unreachable below worldwide regulation.
However there’s nothing in the rules that requires anybody to confirm the US agent is a identified, respected particular person with a working phone quantity and e-mail handle, figuring out of an precise everlasting workplace. And although the FCC might need tips suggesting these issues, Keller & Heckman accomplice Greg Kunkle tells The Verge that it’s unlikely anybody’s bothering to test.
“To my data, there’s no actual vetting of the US agent,” he tells The Verge. “If you happen to’re making a misstatement, that’s a rule violation, however I don’t assume the FCC or TCB is checking these actively. I’m undecided anyone is.”
Kunkle says that for the previous decade or so, FCC authorizations haven’t truly been dealt with by the FCC in any respect — the company outsourced that function to roughly 40 personal firms referred to as TCBs, brief for Telecommunications Certification Our bodies. “As soon as the TCB finishes its course of, you’re good to go,” says Kunkle, including that these authorizations go straight into the FCC database with no extra FCC enter in any respect.
A TCB may theoretically get in hassle for letting banned firms by means of, even lose its standing — and the FCC does ask TCBs to not take the “US agent” at their phrase. The company added specific guidelines this past December about that, together with the requirement for “a legitimate bodily US mailing handle,” not only a digital mailbox or a vacant lot:
“TCBs shouldn’t rely solely on the applicant’s certification,” the FCC writes. If a TCB has any motive to imagine {that a} gadget might be banned, the FCC says it shouldn’t course of the applying in any respect. And if a TCB decides it did the flawed factor, it ought to “instantly submit a KDB inquiry explaining the difficulty to the FCC,” the company provides.
However does that occur? We reached out to TÜV Rheinland, the TCB that accepted Odyssey Robotic’s FCC authorization, to let it know we have been writing a narrative about Odyssey Robotic making probably fraudulent attestations, and the corporate nonetheless couldn’t discover something flawed.
“As of at this time, we do not need any concrete proof for questioning our certifications to Odyssey Robotic. If there’s a affordable foundation for questioning a certification, we are going to observe the procedures established by the FCC for such circumstances,” TÜV Rheinland communications supervisor Maximilian Grün informed The Verge on July fifteenth.
TÜV Rheinland mentioned it hadn’t obtained any communication from the FCC concerning Odyssey Robotic, but in addition that Odyssey Robotic didn’t forge the TÜV Rheinland check reviews hooked up to its FCC submitting. These have been real.
If the TCBs do their jobs, it’s potential they might catch some faux manufacturers. The TCBs are supposed to audit 5 percent of all devices they certify in a calendar 12 months and report again to the FCC with their findings — together with whether or not an organization fails to offer a pattern of a product for testing. Maybe Odyssey Robotic would have been the 1 in 20 and get caught that means.
However to this point, the one “DJI entrance firms” we’ve seen focused by the FCC are those that journalists dropped at the company’s consideration.
On July tenth, the FCC proposed $25,000 fines towards eight of the “DJI entrance firms,” noting that they have been alerted to the manufacturers by means of analysis from Konrad Iturbe and my very own protection on The Verge. It justified the fines, and probably additional motion, as a result of these firms’ US brokers didn’t even hassle replying to the company’s letters.
In 2024, the FCC equally proposed over $700,000 in fines against Eken, a Hong Kong-based video doorbell producer that additionally failed to offer working contact data for a US agent. That point, it was journalists at Consumer Reports who prompted the FCC to behave.
However even when the FCC can concern a superb, it in all probability gained’t have the ability to gather.
Earlier this 12 months, the company cited the Eken case as evidence that “overseas actors in our gear authorization have been capable of evade US regulation when merchandise they’re liable for have harmed American customers.” Even when an organization pretends to be based mostly within the US, the FCC can’t attain them in the event that they’re truly in China as an alternative.
There would possibly nonetheless be actual monetary penalties for some DJI entrance firms. On July seventeenth, the FCC took issues up a notch by threatening to retroactively ban the DJI fronts’ already-approved products from import, sale, advertising, and distribution, which may very well be the top for profitable manufacturers like Xtra and Skyrover that snuck in earlier than the ban.
Nevertheless it looks like that is likely to be the place the FCC’s direct powers of enforcement finish. Former FCC enforcement chief Peter Hyun tells The Verge that the company will need to ship a message to different firms not to do that factor, however the instruments it has in its instrument belt are forfeitures, stop and desist letters, and “show-cause” orders the place an organization has to elucidate why its license shouldn’t be revoked. The FCC may additionally theoretically assist the Division of Justice carry a smuggling cost, he says.
Mendacity smugglers hiding behind disconnected telephone numbers gained’t be stepping ahead to offer their actual identities, in fact.
On July twenty first, a month and a half after Iturbe and The Verge requested the FCC about Odyssey Robotic for this story, the company revealed it had sent a “show-cause” order to the company a number of days after we tipped them off. The FCC’s investigation was restricted to sending letters to Odyssey and eTak and noting whether or not the 2 entities responded. Odyssey didn’t reply. eTak denied any relationship with Odyssey.
eTak replied to the FCC on July thirteenth, the identical day I spoke to its founder on the telephone.
The query now isn’t what occurs to the empty husk of Odyssey Robotic, however what number of different smugglers would possibly sneak by means of when the company isn’t tipped off. If the one motive the FCC caught Odyssey is a man named Konrad — properly, that’s not how authorities companies are imagined to work.
The FCC’s client gadget bans are damaged in the event that they don’t require anybody to do a primary Google search earlier than legally approving banned devices for import and sale. They’re damaged if the FCC can’t monitor down and make a significant instance of a nasty actor even after they’re caught, as a result of the identical lies that made them invisible additionally defend them from penalties.
Since Odyssey hadn’t but begun promoting drones within the US, revoking its FCC authorization possible wouldn’t matter to its thriller homeowners. It wouldn’t be shocking if their takeaway is to lie extra fastidiously, moderately than not mendacity in any respect.
Nevertheless it does appear that the FCC is making an attempt to shut some loopholes.
At first, it appeared that the FCC was following the America First system of punishing Chinese language entities based mostly on their affiliation moderately than their actions — it took motion against eight so-called “bad labs” that check radios in China just because Chinese language state-sponsored entities had greater than 10 % fairness. When it moved towards SGS-CSTC Shenzhen, a lab utilized by at the very least one DJI entrance, it didn’t point out that entrance in its justification for the transfer.
However on July twenty first, the FCC moved against test lab Shenzhen STS as a result of it “willfully supplied false check outcomes” for quite a lot of Bluetooth headsets, telephones, and tablets, which the lab blamed on negligent employees. Maybe the FCC will act towards TCBs and check labs that aren’t fastidiously checking banned devices, too.
The company can be now proposing to make on-line retailers like Amazon show the FCC IDs of every machine on their product pages so that customers can test for themselves whether or not the names line up, at the very least. Amazon already collects these FCC IDs from sellers, however spokesperson Juliana Karber confirms the corporate’s by no means required them to truly show the IDs publicly.
The FCC didn’t reply to any of our repeated requests for remark over the previous two months.
Up to now, we’ve been unable to trace down “Randolph Howard Eason,” the “compliance director” who submitted Odyssey Robotic’s paperwork. Nobody we’ve discovered by that identify or comparable appears more likely to be a match, and people who might need been paid by Odyssey — just like the coworking area and TÜV Rheinland — declined to inform The Verge something extra about their purchasers.
Not that we’d essentially get very far, as a result of Odyssey Robotic used middlemen to cowl its tracks. For instance, Sean Hartlieb, an legal professional in Hawaii who processed the “Galiview” trademark, tells The Verge that he by no means interacted with the corporate in any respect. He says he processes trademark filings for all types of Chinese language firms as a aspect gig, getting his assignments from a Chinese language agency that expenses a flat payment for US logos.
By paying small standardized charges, it may not be that costly for a giant firm to construct plenty of shell firms and see which of them escape discover. “$20,000, perhaps one thing like that?” Kunkle suggests every may cost a little. “Logos, TCBs, check labs, it’s in all probability someplace in that vary. It’s not way more than that.”
So what retains a giant overseas model from sneaking by means of?
“I hate to say it, however it will be fairly straightforward,” says Kunkle. “I believe simply the quantity of gadgets coming into the USA — in the event you’re the kind of person who’s keen to fudge this paperwork and also you reside in some place the place you assume you’re unreachable by the US authorities, I don’t assume this could be exhausting to faux in any respect.”
Picture: Alex Parkin / The Verge, FCC, Skyrover
If anybody have been to make a definitive hyperlink between Odyssey Robotic and DJI, I assumed it will be one of many corporations that registered its LLC in the USA. Odyssey Robotic is presently registered by means of Delaware Enterprise Incorporators and California Registered Agent. However Delaware is a state that lets firms arrange LLCs anonymously.
“Sadly, it opens up the door to fraud and there’s not a lot recourse,” says the receptionist at Delaware Enterprise Incorporators.
If I need to attain Odyssey Robotic, the receptionist at California Registered Agent tells me, I can strive mailing the message to her workplace in Sacramento as an alternative.
“We’re actual!” she says. “Typically our purchasers aren’t, sadly.”
Extra reporting by John Higgins.
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