Florida authorities arrested three people for illegally sending material to Iran.
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For receiving more than $ 3 million from accounts in Asia and Europe, and having used that money to buy genetic sequencing equipment to send to Iran despite the sanctions, three people in Florida were arrested by local authorities.
Mohammad Faghihi, 52, his wife Farzeneh Modarresi, 53, and his sister Faezeh Faghihi, 50, worked for a company called Express Gene that received multiple transfers with large sums of money from China, Iran, Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to acquire this equipment and then send it in violation of the regulations of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), according to local authorities.
The Attorney General for the Southern District of Florida also indicated that said transfers were carried out between 2016 and 2020 to buy the equipment that would have been sent to Iran, a country sanctioned by the United States Government.
From 2013 to 2019 Faghihi was a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Miller School of Medicine at Miam University.i (UM).
According to the authorities, Faghihi and his company Express Gene received large sums of money during that time, which did not declare before the National Institute of Health or the UM.
All three will be charged by conspiring against the United States and for money laundering.
Faghihi and Modarresi were further charged with smuggling and exporting illegal goods to Iran. Also, Faezeh Faghihi was charged with smuggling into the United States, wire fraud and making false statements.
Information of The Miami Herald.
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