A California businessman accused of supplying American computer networking equipment to customers in Iran, including organizations tied to the country’s nuclear and military programs, is facing a conspiracy charge, the U.S. Justice Department said.
The man, Jamshid Ghomi, 63, of Newport Coast, Calif., a dual citizen of Iran and the United States, was charged with conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the department announced on Wednesday. Mr. Ghomi is the chief executive of Faraz Pardaz Rayaneh, a Tehran-based technology company.
A federal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California said that, from at least 2011 through 2023, Mr. Ghomi purchased large quantities of American-made technology and routed the equipment through intermediaries in the United Arab Emirates before it reached customers in Iran. That technology could not be legally exported to Iran without authorization from the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury Department.
For more than a decade, Mr. Ghomi, according to the federal complaint, personally obtained large quantities of restricted networking equipment, primarily via eBay, and arranged for their shipment. The equipment included routers, firewalls, switches and modules, manufactured by Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Extreme Networks and Hewlett-Packard, federal prosecutors said.
Mr. Ghomi’s company supplied American-made equipment to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, the government agency responsible for the country’s nuclear program, from 2017 through 2023, the complaint states. Investigators said the company also sold networking, security and encryption equipment to Iran’s Ministry of Defense and affiliated military organizations from 2014 to 2022.
“Our nation’s laws prohibiting doing business with one of the world’s largest state sponsors of terrorism must be enforced and obeyed,” Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in a statement.
Mr. Ghomi faces up to 20 years in federal prison, if convicted. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The authorities said Mr. Ghomi had transferred proceeds from his sales into the United States through a network of companies and exchange houses in several countries and territories, including the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands.
According to federal investigators, more than $15 million was moved from Iran into bank accounts and escrow accounts linked to Mr. Ghomi, from 2011 to 2024. Mr. Ghomi reported the money to the Internal Revenue Service as a foreign inheritance while declaring little annual income on his federal tax returns.
Mr. Ghomi made his initial appearance in court on Wednesday but entered no plea, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
The case against Mr. Ghomi was the latest in a string of legal actions the U.S. government has taken to cut off Iran, Russia and China from American technology. In recent years, the Justice and Commerce Departments have worked closely to enforce laws that limit the transfer of critical technologies to rival countries.
Kitty Bennett and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Mark Walker is a Times reporter who covers breaking news and culture.
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