A California tech CEO is facing 20 years in prison after allegedly earning millions by selling U.S.-origin computer networking equipment to Iran’s military and nuclear establishments, Justice Department officials said.
Jamshid Ghomi, 63, was charged Wednesday with conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the primary legal foundation for most U.S. economic sanctions programs.
Mr. Ghomi, who holds both American and Iranian citizenship, is the founder and owner of Faraz Pardaz Rayaneh Co. Ltd., a Tehran-based computer networking company. For more than a decade, according to prosecutors, he used the company to procure U.S.-origin networking equipment for customers in Iran in violation of ongoing U.S. sanctions, federal prosecutors said.
“Ghomi is accused of aiding our declared enemies by selling U.S.-origin computer networking parts to Iran and earning millions of dollars in violation of U.S. sanctions laws,” said U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli. “Our nation’s laws prohibiting doing business with one of the world’s largest state sponsors of terrorism must be enforced and obeyed.”
Prosecutors say from 2011 to 2015, Mr. Ghomi used his own eBay and PayPal accounts to make more than 400 purchases of computer-networking equipment. He had the material shipped to intermediaries in the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Ghomi is accused of negotiating the 2023 purchase of networking equipment directly from suppliers in Minnesota and Nebraska and routing the purchases through a front company in the United Arab Emirates and then on to Iran, officials said.
From 2014 to 2018 prosecutors say he arranged the smuggling of more than 275 tons of networking equipment into Iran by using freight forwarders and intermediaries in Dubai to disguise that Iran was the true destination. None of the items could be lawfully exported to Iran without a license from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, prosecutors said.
Investigators said Mr. Ghomi took “deliberate steps” to conceal his operations, telling his co-conspirators in the UAE to keep his name off shipping paperwork and omit invoices for shipments bound for Iran. On at least two occasions, he smuggled U.S.-origin computer equipment inside larger shipments.
“He used front companies in the UAE to obscure his role, and he personally rejected warnings on invoices and software licenses that exporting these goods to Iran was prohibited,” officials said. “Ghomi and his co-conspirators referred to Iran as ’Motherland’ in their internal correspondence concerning the equipment’s procurement.”
Mr. Ghomi’s company had annual sales that exceeded $10 million and provided support to hundreds of Iranian companies and government entities, many of which are subject to U.S. sanctions, officials said.
