Two Russian nationals based in Miami-Dade County, Florida, pleaded guilty last week to violating the Export Control Reform Act (ECRA) The scam began in May 2022 and lasted until the arrest of Oleg Sergeyevhich Patsulya and Vasilii Sergeyevich Besedin on May 11, 2023. Russian airlines sent the money via Turkish bank accounts.
A company controlled by one of the defendants, MIC P&I LLC, received at least $4,582,288 in connection with this frame-up. Both men face a prison sentence of up to 20 years in prison for pleading guilty to “conspiracy to export items from the United States without a license, in violation of the Export control Reform Act’ The FBI Director Christopher Wray: “Make no mistake, threats to America’s economic security are threats to our national security’ ” The investigation was coordinated by the Disruptive Technology Strike Force and the KleptoCapture Task Force. The first is an inter-institutional strike force responsible for preventing the acquisition of critical technologies by authoritarian regimes and hostile nation states.