A 44-year-old Woodland Hills woman was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday evening on suspicion of trafficking arms for the Iranian authorities, U.S. officers introduced on Sunday, April 19.
Shamim Mafi is charged in a federal grievance with brokering the sale of drones, bombs, bomb fuses and thousands and thousands of rounds of ammunition manufactured by Iran and bought to Sudan. That nation is now in its fourth yr of a civil warfare that has killed at least 59,000 folks.
Sales of Iranian weapons are prohibited underneath U.S. authorities sanctions, and Mafi didn’t receive a license or written approval from the U.S. State Department to dealer them, based on the felony grievance, filed in U.S. District Court on April 18.
She is accused of violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Arms Export Control Act.
“As was made clear by DAG (Deputy Attorney General) Todd Blanche, anyone who violates United States sanctions laws will be vigorously prosecuted by the DOJ,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli posted on X on Sunday.
Search warrants discovered proof of 62 contacts between Mafi and Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security officers, based on an FBI agent assigned to the Iran Counterintelligence Squad out of the Los Angeles workplace.
Mafi is an Iranian nationwide born in Iran in 1981, and he or she lived there till 2013, based on the grievance. She turned a everlasting resident of the United States in 2016. She lives in Woodland Hills and “frequently travels to Iran, Turkey, Oman and other countries,” the grievance states.
She was underneath surveillance since 2021, federal authorities mentioned. The grievance particulars communications about tips on how to obtain fee for weapons utilizing nontraditional means which might be much less more likely to be tracked, and Mafi’s actions concerned “a high degree of sophistication” and “substantial sums of money,” it states.
Mafi was seen at her condominium advanced in Woodland Hills as lately as April 13, authorities mentioned, and was arrested at LAX as she ready to go away the nation. She was touring to Istanbul, Turkey, based on the FBI.
The grievance alleges that Mafi and an unnamed co-conspirator brokered weapons offers on Iran’s behalf by means of Atlas International, often known as Atlas Global Holding and Atlas Tech LLC.
In one occasion detailed within the grievance, Mafi facilitated a contract for Iranian-made drones value $70.6 million to Sudan. She additionally brokered the sale of 55,000 bomb fuses to the Sudanese authorities. As half of these transactions, Mafi despatched a letter of intent to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “to purchase the bomb fuses for Sudan.”
The IRGC was declared a international terrorist group by the U.S. Secretary of State in 2019.
The grievance additionally cites proof that Mafi and a co-conspirator tried to dealer gross sales of AK-47 machine weapons together with 240 million rounds of ammunition to the Sudanese Ministry of Defense.
Mafi was conscious of the sanctions on Iran and “the illicit nature of her arms brokering activities,” the grievance says. It additionally says she had information of the Iranian monetary techniques “and money laundering channels used by the Government of Iran”.
She is also accused of telling her conspirators and different folks to not focus on the weapons offers by phone, and to delete any messages referring to the offers. Payments had been to be made “in small amounts” and solely in money to keep away from U.S. scrutiny, the grievance says.
News studies courting again to 2022 say Iran has been funding and arming the navy within the Sudan civil warfare. Sudan final week entered a fourth yr of warfare that, along with killing 59,000 folks, has pressured 13 million to flee their houses.
Mafi is predicted to make her preliminary look Monday afternoon in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles.
If convicted, she faces a statutory most sentence of 20 years in federal jail.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
