Iranian citizen Arsalan Shemirani was sentenced Aug. 15 to 48 months in prison for conspiring to illegal export electronic parts from the U.S. to Iran, ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) said. According to court documents, Shemirani, along with his brother in Iran and a co-conspirator in Hong Kong, exported the parts from the U.S. to Iran via Canada and Hong Kong, without obtaining authorization or a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Shemirani was residing in Canada at the time of the conspiracy and received purchase orders totaling approximately 3,695 electronic components from his brother, who operated an electronics supply business in Tehran, Iran. ICE said the exported items included high performance electronic power equipment like field programmable microchips, analog converters and other testing and power equipment. Shemirani pleaded guilty Jan. 25 to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and to defraud the U.S., ICE said. He was also sentenced to forfeiture in the amount of $187,305.

Motorscience and Motorscience Enterprise agreed to settle alleged Clean Air Act (CAA) violations stemming from 24,478 illegally imported all-terrain, recreational vehicles, according to an Aug. 29 press release from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The vehicles were imported into the U.S. from China for which Motorscience obtained certificates of conformity without testing “to ensure emissions would meet applicable limits on harmful air pollution," EPA said. According to several complaints filed by the U.S. and the state of California in September 2011, Motorscience had arranged for only a limited number of vehicles and then reused those results to obtain certificates of conformity for the other vehicles. For at least three of the other vehicles, EPA said that emissions exceeded the federal limits for hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides.

The Court of International Trade upheld the Commerce’s Department’s finding that UK Carbon and Graphite is circumventing the antidumping duty order on small diameter graphite electrodes from China. In August 2012, Commerce said UKCG was circumventing the order by sourcing unfinished graphite electrodes from China, putting them through a minor finishing process in the UK, and exporting the product to the U.S. (see 12080817). The court said Commerce justified its analysis, including its decision to apply the China-wide rate to UKCG, as well as its use of surrogate values from other countries to set the price of the Chinese inputs when determining how much value UKCG added in the UK.

Venezuelan Air Force Colonel Guiseppe Menegazzo-Carrasquel was sentenced to 19 months in federal prison for conspiring to export military aircraft engines to Venezuela in violation of the Arms Export Control Act, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to court documents, Menegazzo-Carrasquel was part of a Venezuelan air force team that “negotiated with Mesa-based Marsh Aviation between November 2005 and February 2008 to refurbish 18 T-76 aircraft engines,” which are designed for the OV-10 Bronco Aircraft. The negotiations took place “under the guise that the engines were intended for civilian use” when they were actually meant for the Venezuelan air force team, ICE said.

A federal judge on Aug. 23 sentenced a woman from Hogansburg, New York, to 18 months in prison for exporting endangered reptiles to Canada, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York. According to the attorney’s office, Olivia Terrance was part of a conspiracy to smuggle over 18,000 endangered and threatened reptiles, including turtles, alligators, iguanas, and chameleons, across the border into Canada in 2009 and 2010. The animals were worth “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Two New York residents were sentenced in the U.S. District Court for Western New York for their part in a conspiracy to import and distribute counterfeit Nike sneakers from China. Xiao Cheng Lin was sentenced to one year in prison and a $7,500 fine, and her husband Ling Zen Hu got six months in prison and will pay a $6,000 fine. Judge Richard Arcara’s sentences came in well below 37 to 46 months recommended for the crime, despite the government’s arguments to the contrary. The defendants’ children had submitted letters to the court warning of the hardship a harsh sentence would cause the family, and Congresswoman Grace Meng, D-N.Y., contributed a letter as well.

A man from Sierra Leone was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, N.Y. for brokering the supply of “yellowcake” uranium to Iran in violation of U.S. export laws, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. Patrick Campbell of Freetown, Sierra Leone, faces up to 20 years in prison after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement undercover agent negotiated the uranium shipments and then convinced Campbell to come to the U.S. to finalize negotiations.

Miami-based customs broker pleaded guilty Aug. 23 to Lacey Act violations, after it acted as broker on an entry of caviar but didn’t file the required declaration, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. Data Freight Corporation admitted it didn’t file Fish and Wildlife Service Form 3-177 for 468 grams of Siberian sturgeon caviar that was imported in 2011 and 2012, even though it knew or should have that the declaration was required.

A man from Kent, Wash., pleaded guilty on Aug. 21 to trafficking over $500,000 in counterfeit luxury vehicle parts and accessories, according to a release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Washington. According to the plea agreement, Guoxiong Xian owns 3 Ways, which sells auto parts like license plate frames, automobile logos and other decorative items over the internet. From November 2008 to April 2013, Xian sold around $538,000 worth of Chinese counterfeit automobile accessories, bearing trademarks that belong to companies such as BMW, Mercedes and Toyota. In January 2013, Xian sold various counterfeit accessories to an undercover agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, the release said.

The Court of International Trade again remanded Commerce’s selection of India as the surrogate country in the 2009-10 antidumping duty administrative review of polyethylene terephthalate film, sheet and strip from China (A-570-924). Commerce again declined to consider the most recent economic data on the two countries when making its decision. The court had already remanded on that issue in February (see 13020802). This time, Commerce rejected the data on procedural grounds, because it purportedly didn’t have enough time to review the data. This was despite the fact that the data had been placed on the record before the regulatory deadline for submitting factual information. The court agreed with Dupont Teijin’s argument that Commerce was effectively creating a new deadline that isn’t specified in the regulations, and remanded for a second time.