Public procurement processes put in to enable competition and prevent corruption (ostensibly) enable situations where you make public bids for network infrastructure and get whatever the lowest price bidder grabbed.
Just one procurement officer with the slightest doubt, and calling up someone at Cisco HQ to double check a serial number, would have discovered this scam almost instantly.
Unless they are already part of a well established contractor. And even then at least a few dozen sets of eyeballs are going over the paperwork from my understanding.