The owner of Rapid Export Services in Miami pleaded guilty on June 12 to one count of illegally smuggling goods from the U.S., the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida said in a June 20 news release. Juan Carlos Rodriguez Espinoza "faces a maximum statutory sentence of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine," the Department of Justice said. Rodriguez is said to have received 13 containers of alcohol and cigarettes in 2016 from Panama. He then arranged for the containers to be held in-bond at a bonded warehouse operated by Double Ace, Inc.
The Department of Justice indicted a group of alleged elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn traffickers, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said in a June 13 news release. The indictment names four individuals, two of whom were arrested in Uganda or Senegal, while two Kenyans "remain fugitives." Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said "the alleged enterprise, responsible for the illegal slaughter of dozens of rhinos and more than 100 elephants, was as destructive to protected species as it was lucrative." DOJ said the horns and ivory involved were valued at more than $7 million.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is amending regulations to adjust for inflation by increasing the maximum amount of civil monetary penalties that the agency may impose for certain violations, OFAC said in a June 13 update on its website and a notice scheduled to be published in the June 14 Federal Register. The change was made “to implement for 2019 the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990,” the notice said. OFAC is increasing the maximum amount of penalties that fall under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act and the Clean Diamond Trade Act.
New Jersey resident Joyce Eliabachus pleaded guilty to charges related to her role in illegally smuggling millions of dollars worth of aircraft parts to the U.S., the U.S. Attorney’s Office for District of New Jersey said in a June 11 news release. "Eliabachus and others allegedly ran an international smuggling ring that shipped $2 million in aircraft parts to multiple Iranian airlines, including a company that has provided financial, material, and technological support to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said. “This arrest, which was made possible by a close collaboration between our office and our partners at Homeland Security Investigations and the Office of Export Enforcement, has snuffed out another source of funds and goods to overseas entities that may endanger our national and economic security.” Eliabachus was the principal officer of Edsun Equipments LLC, an aviation parts trading company run out of her Morristown, New Jersey, residence, the Justice Department said.
The Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security's Office of Antiboycott Compliance settled with a U.S.-based company for $54,000 after the company committed 27 violations of the Export Administration Regulations, enforcement records show. An order signed by Commerce May 20 says Zurn Industries, LLC completed transactions from the U.S. to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates related to actions that “would have the effect of furthering or supporting a restrictive trade practice or unsanctioned foreign boycott.” Zurn did not report “receipts of these requests” to Commerce, as required by law, the records said. Zurn must pay the fine to Commerce within 30 days of the order or face additional charges, and may have export licenses or privileges revoked. If Zurn does not pay the fine, its “export privileges” will be denied for one year.
Ara Dolarian, owner of arms brokering company Dolarian Capital Inc., is facing criminal charges over the illegal brokering of arms sales, the Department of Justice said in a May 20 news release. Although the State Department denied applications from Dolarian to broker arms deals, the company "allegedly attempted to broker a multi-million dollar transfer of high‑explosive bombs, rockets, military-grade firearms, and aircraft-mounted cannons from Eastern Europe and South Africa to the government of Nigeria," said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California. "Without approval from the State Department, Dolarian allegedly accepted approximately $8.3 million from Nigeria and its broker," the DOJ said. Those funds were then funneled through numerous shell companies and were used by Dolarian to pay off various expenses, it said. Dolarian is alleged to have willfully violated the International Traffic in Arms Regulations prohibitions on "brokering activities" without State approval, according to the complaint.
Two former top executives of Total Reclaim, billed as the Northwest’s largest e-waste recycler, were sentenced April 23 to 28 months for wire fraud conspiracy in connection with the illegal export of 8.3 million pounds of junked TVs to Hong Kong between 2008 and 2015, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle. Craig Lorch, 61, and Jeff Zirkle, 55, earned millions by promising to recycle e-waste responsibly but secretly shipped it overseas where it was destroyed in an “environmentally unsafe” manner, it said. “Motivated by greed, these defendants betrayed every pledge they made to be good environmental stewards,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Tessa Gorman said. The green group Basel Action Network tipped off authorities to the scheme after electronically tracking the e-waste to Hong Kong, the office said. After BAN confronted Lorch and Zirkle with its findings, they tried to “cover up their fraud by altering hundreds of shipping records,” it alleged. According to the sentencing memorandum, "Lorch altered Total Reclaim shipping manifests to make it appear" that the company "was shipping plastic, rather than flat screens, to Hong Kong." Efforts to reach the defendants’ lawyers were unsuccessful. BAN didn’t comment.
Darus Zehrbach of West Virginia received a six-month prison sentence for making a false statement involving the exportation of electric scooters destined for Iran, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of West Virginia said in a news release. "In February 2015, Zehrbach received a letter from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, denying his application for a license to export electric scooters to Iran," the Justice Department said. "In June 2016, Zehrbach exported eight electric scooters to the United Arab Emirates, knowing that the scooters would be shipped to Iran." Zehrbach admitted to telling a Commerce Department agent "that a shipment he sent to Iran had originated in China when in fact that shipment originated in the United States."
A New Jersey man was sentenced to 46 months in prison after he planned to illegally export firearms and ammunition to Paraguay, the Department of Justice said in an April 18 press release. Pedro Vergara bought at least 13 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition between May 2017 and November 2017, according to the release, and planned to sell them on the black market. Vergara hid the guns in shipping boxes and transported them from New Jersey to a shipping company in New York, the DOJ said, where he planned to smuggle them into Paraguay. Vergara also removed the serial numbers from at least 10 of the guns to conceal “ownership interest,” the release said. In addition to the prison sentence, Vergara was also sentenced to two years of supervised release and fined $10,000.
A federal judge approved the civil forfeiture of nearly $150,000 that was said to be laundered "to further [business owner Tsai Hsien-Tsai's] exportation of goods for the benefit of North Korean and Syrian entities involved in the respective regimes’ weapons programs," the Department of Justice said in an April 3 news release. The complaint alleged that Taiwan-based Trans Multi and its owner, also known as Alex Tsai, had laundered U.S. money related to illegal dealings with Syria and North Korea, the DOJ said. “The Court found that these blocked funds were the product of Tsai’s attempts to sell tools to a Syrian company using U.S. Dollars and a series of front companies,” U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu said. “Sanctions laws are critical to our national security and foreign policy interests, and this case demonstrates that we will seek significant remedies against those companies that violate them.”