Iranian national Saeid Haji Agha Mousaei, 53, made his initial appearance yesterday in Chicago federal court following his extradition from the United Kingdom to face charges for his role in a years-long conspiracy to evade U.S. export restrictions and transship advanced U.S. electronic testing technology to Iran using third-party countries.
According to court documents, Mousaei was a manager of Dubai-based defendant company Millennium Product Company LLC (MPC). As alleged, from January 2014 through at least August 2018, Mousaei, MPC and others devised and participated in a scheme to obtain controlled electronics with military applications, including signals equipment like oscilloscopes and spectrum analyzers, for export and re-export to Iran.
As alleged, Mousaei and his co-defendants understood export restrictions on U.S.-origin goods to prohibited destinations like Iran and falsely represented to U.S. distributors that their purchases would remain in countries other than Iran, such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) or Armenia, where the defendants controlled unnamed companies. In reality, after arranging for distributors of U.S.-origin goods to export shipments to the UAE, the defendants allegedly transshipped goods from the UAE to Iran without the required license and in violation of U.S. law.
Mousaei and MPC are each charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison; smuggling goods from the United States, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison; wire fraud, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison; and violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Mousaei was arrested in the United Kingdom on Jan. 24, 2023 pursuant to an Interpol diffusion notice.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division; Acting U.S. Attorney Morris Pasqual for the Northern District of Illinois; Executive Assistant Director Robert R. Wells of the FBI’s National Security Branch; and Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Matthew S. Axelrod of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) made the announcement.
The FBI and BIS are investigating the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Shawn D. McCarthy for the Northern District of Illinois and Trial Attorney Emma Ellenrieder of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case.
The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs provided valuable assistance in securing Mousaei's extradition from the United Kingdom.
This prosecution is being coordinated through the Disruptive Technology Strike Force—an interagency law enforcement strike force co-led by Departments of Justice and Commerce designed to target illicit actors, protect supply chains, and prevent critical technology from being acquired by authoritarian regimes and hostile nation states. Under leadership from both departments' assistant attorneys general for national security and commerce's assistant secretary for export enforcement respectively—the Strike Force leverages tools across government entities enhancing criminal administrative enforcement over export control laws.
An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.