The U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted an Iran-based procurement ring on Friday for using fake American businesses to deceive U.S. technology companies and funnel restricted military goods to Tehran.
Iranian national Ali Majd Sepehr, through his company Sorena Hushmand Samaneh Company—known as Sorena—allegedly created false U.S. business identities to defraud dozens of American IT firms, resellers, and vendors out of millions of dollars, the department said.
The network is accused of procuring network security equipment, encryption hardware and software, spectrum analyzers, and non-linear junction detectors for MODAFL-controlled entities, including Sairan Information Exchange Space Security Industries Company.
MODAFL is Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics—the agency that oversees the country’s ballistic missile and drone programs. The action marks one of the first known cases of an Iranian procurement network impersonating American businesses to directly defraud U.S. vendors as a method of obtaining export-controlled defense technology….