An Iranian businessman has been jailed for running a sanctions-busting operation after his arrest during a sight-seeing tour of London, when he posed with waxwork dummies of ex-footballer David Beckham and his wife Victoria.
Millionaire Seyed Shahidian ran an online fee-charging service that provided Iranians with the tools to dupe US businesses into sending them goods in contravention of US sanctions rules. It included setting them up with internet addresses to make it look as though they were based in the UAE.
Shahidian was arrested in 2018 after a surveillance operation in London discovered that he was in town visiting some of London’s best-known tourist destinations including Madame Tussauds, the waxwork museum, and the London Eye, the giant Ferris wheel on the south bank of the River Thames.
The dapperly-dressed Shahidian also posed in front of a McLaren supercar and one of the capital’s iconic red telephone boxes in pictures retrieved from his phone and posted on social media.
He was wanted by the FBI at the time of his visit to London. The agency’s British counterpart arrested Shahidian in a residential street in Shepherd’s Bush, west London, where he had been renting a room for his short trip, said the country’s National Crime Agency (NCA).
Shahidian was extradited to the US in May and pleaded guilty last week to conspiring to violate US sanctions against Iran. A judge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sentenced him to 23 months in prison, representing the time he spent in custody awaiting trial following his arrest in London in November 2018.
The 33-year-old was the founder and chief executive of Payment24, which charged a fee that allowed Iranians to make online purchases in the US. Unauthorised exports by US businesses are banned under US law.
The business made Shahidian a millionaire and allowed him to employ 40 people in Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan.
The sanctions-busting kit sent to customers included fake documents, an IP address in the UAE, a PayPal account and a Visa gift card.
The company’s own website claimed to have brought millions of dollars of foreign currency into Iran by circumventing “American sanctions”.
It offered customers advice on how to avoid restrictions on foreign websites including to “never attempt to log into those sites with an Iranian IP address”.
British investigators said they believed the platform has been used by international cyber criminals seeking to target the UK.
Shahidian admitted using forged passports to set up hundreds of PayPal accounts that appeared to be for people outside of Iran. They were used to buy computer software, licenses and servers, according to the US Justice Department.
“In Iran, based on his illegal business, Shahidian had been a high-profile executive and a millionaire. He is now a convicted felon who has lost everything,” US Attorney Erica McDonald said in a statement. “Shahidian … employed a variety of fraudulent tactics designed to circumvent United States sanctions lawfully imposed on Iran. Such actions are criminal and threaten our national security interests.”
President Donald Trump's administration has stepped up sanctions against Iran in recent years. Washington this month targeted 18 major Iranian banks, a move that could largely cut off the nation of 80 million people from the world's financial system just as it tries to cope with the Middle East's worst Covid-19 outbreak.
Nigel Leary, head of the cybercrime unit at the NCA, said: “The NCA and FBI will continue to work in close partnership to target and disrupt serious and organised cyber criminals wherever they may be in the world.”
