Jose Rafael Vasquez, a resident of Dallas, was sentenced on Dec. 15 to 63 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release for attempting to export firearms, firearm magazines and thousands of rounds of ammunition to Mexico, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas said. Vasquez attempted to leave the U.S. at the Laredo Port of Entry into Mexico in October 2020, when law enforcement found bundles of goods zip-tied to the bottom of his vehicle containing ammunition. After further inspecting the car, border officials found three AK-47 rifles, eight semi-automatic handguns, 16 handgun magazines and over 4,700 rounds of 7.62 mm ammunition inside the vehicle, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Ricardo Alberto Martinelli Linares pleaded guilty on Dec. 14 to conspiracy to commit money laundering as part of a massive bribery scheme that has already seen punishments doled out to Brazil-based global construction conglomerate Odebrecht S.A., the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York said. The conglomerate pleaded guilty in 2016 to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for a bribery and money laundering scheme in Panama. Luis Martinelli Linares, Ricardo's brother, pleaded guilty on Dec. 2 to the same misconduct.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control fined an unnamed person about $133,000 after they violated U.S. sanctions against Iran, OFAC said in a Dec. 8 notice. OFAC said the person accepted payment on behalf of an Iran-based company selling cement clinker to another company for a project in a third country.

The U.S. concluded the forfeiture of two large weapons shipments and one large cache of oil products from Iran following two cases in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Department of Justice announced Dec. 7. In 2019 and 2020, the U.S. Navy seized 171 Iranian surface-to-air missiles and eight anti-tank missiles, along with around 1.1 million barrels of Iranian petroleum products in the Arabian Sea in the largest-ever forfeiture of fuel and weapons shipments from Iran, DOJ said. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps organized the weapons shipments, designated for the Houthi militia in Yemen. The Navy seized the weapons from two vessels during routine maritime security operations, DOJ said. The petroleum products were taken from four foreign-flagged tankers in or around the Arabian Sea en route to Venezuela, DOJ said.

The Bureau of Industry and Security on Nov. 30 revoked export privileges for five people after they illegally exported weapons or ammunition and for another person for their ties to a foreign terrorist organization.

Muhammad Uzair Khalid of Garland, Texas, pleaded guilty Nov. 23 to one count of trafficking in counterfeit goods, for illegally importing counterfeit vaping products from China, the Department of Justice said. The trafficked goods include counterfeit vaping atomizers, labels, boxes and bags for vaping-related products. Uzair admitted to regularly communicating with Chinese manufacturers about the counterfeit vaping products, including on methods to imitate the branding and logos of the well-known U.S. vape companies, DOJ said. The counterfeit goods were seized during a 2019 search of Uzair's storefront by ICE's Homeland Security Investigations as part of a broader initiative by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FDA and state and local health departments to counter lung-related diseases associated with unregulated vaping products.

The Commerce Department again renewed a temporary export denial order for Mahan Airways because the airline continues to violate the order and the Export Administration Regulations, according to a Nov. 17 notice. The Iranian airline has been on the banned list since 2008. The latest renewal is for 180 days from Nov. 17.

Dali Bagrou, of Alpharetta, Georgia, and owner of World Mining and Oil Supply, was sentenced to 51 months in prison accompanied by three years of supervised release for his role in a scheme to evade U.S. national security laws, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia said. World Mining was sentenced to five years' probation.

Jean Patrice Delia, a former General Electric Company engineer and a resident of Montreal, Canada, was sentenced Nov. 10 to 24 months in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets from GE, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York said. Delia, along with his co-defendant and partner Miguel Sernas -- a resident and citizen of Mexico, admitted to conspiring to compete against GE using its own trade secrets. Delia and Sernas operated at ThermoGen Power Services and used the stolen trade secrets that were taken from when Delia worked at GE from 2001 through 2012. Delia was also ordered to pay $1.4 million in restitution. Sernas was sentenced in 2019 to 12 months in jail and ordered to also pay $1.4 million in restitution.

Former Broadcom engineer Peter Kisang Kim was indicted by a federal grand jury for stealing company trade secrets, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California said. Kim, a resident of Ben Lomond, California, worked as a principal design engineer at Broadcom for two years and allegedly stole trade secrets on chips used in high-volume data centers, the U.S. Attorney's office said. The chips were stored in nonpublic document repositories restricted to Broadcom employees. Ten days after leaving the San Jose, California-based company, Kim started working for a China-based startup focusing on chip design and the market for networking chips, the indictment said. Kim allegedly used the Broadcom trade secrets on a newly issued company laptop. Kim is charged with 18 counts of trade secret theft and faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release for each count.