A Pakistani national was convicted last week of smuggling "Iranian-made advanced conventional weaponry" meant for the Houthis in Yemen, DOJ announced. Muhammad Pahlawan will be sentenced on Sept. 22 and faces a maximum of 20 years in prison.
A Chinese national pleaded guilty on June 9 to illegally exporting firearms, ammunition and "other military items" to North Korea by hiding them inside shipping containers leaving a California port, DOJ announced. Shenghua Wen admitted to one count of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government.
A grand jury indictment unsealed last week charges two people with trying to pay millions of dollars to ship U.S. export controlled technology and weapons to China, offering in some cases more than double the market rate to buy military jet engines, drones, cryptographic devices and other sensitive technologies.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on May 16 issued a temporary restraining order against two logistics companies, barring them from using the U.S. Postal Service to ship packages with counterfeit postage.
Former airline executive Skye Xu was sentenced to two years in prison for his role in a scheme to defraud Polar Air Cargo Worldwide of more than $32 million, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced on May 15. Xu pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and honest services wire fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
A Chinese company and three Chinese nationals were charged for their alleged roles in the illegal importation of "pill-making equipment," according to an indictment unsealed on May 12, DOJ announced. The company, CapsulCN International Co., and the individuals, Xiochuan "Ricky" Pan, Tingyan "Monica" Yang and Xi "Inna" Chen, were charged with smuggling and violating the Controlled Substances Act.
The U.S. this week said it won’t be prosecuting a NASA contractor for export control violations because the organization quickly self-reported the breaches and demonstrated “exceptional and proactive” cooperation with DOJ’s National Security Division. The announcement came after one of the contractor’s employees pleaded guilty to illegally exporting flight control software to a Chinese company on the Entity List and embezzling at least $161,000 in software license sales from those exports.
A former U.S. Army intelligence analyst was sentenced to seven years in prison for conspiring to "obtain and disclose national defense information," illegally exporting data related to defense articles to China, and conspiring to illegally export defense articles and bribery, DOJ announced. The analyst, Korbein Schultz, pleaded guilty last year to sending "sensitive, non-public U.S. military information, to an individual he believed was affiliated with the Chinese government," DOJ said.
The U.S. joined a case against importer Barco Uniforms, companies that supply Barco and the two individuals that control the suppliers for allegedly violating the False Claims Act by knowingly underpaying customs duties on apparel imports, DOJ announced. The suit was originally filed in 2016 under the FCA's whistleblower provision by Toni Lee, the former director of product commercialization at Barco. The U.S. intervened in the case, filing a complaint on April 11.
A British court last week sentenced two Russians, including one former senior trade official, to prison for violating U.K. sanctions against Russia. The case marks the first conviction in the U.K. for a breach of sanctions under its Russia Sanctions Regulations, the Crown Prosecution Service said.