Ben Chapman

This guy was living in a $35 million Italianate estate.

Thanks for having me.

According to federal investigators, it was a massive operation that went on for years.

Basically, what we have is a businessman, 63 years old, a dual Iranian and United States citizen named Jamshid Gomi.

of Newport Beach, California, had a company that was based in Tehran.

And what he was doing, according to prosecutors, was sending sensitive technology from the United States

to his business in Iran.

And then at that point, the technology was distributed by the local company and sold to hundreds of different organizations in Iran, including the government, which used the technology in both military operations and in its nuclear programs.

According to prosecutors and investigators, Mr. Gomi used fake shipping protocols to get this hardware out of the United States.

So what he was doing was legally purchasing this stuff domestically, and it was primarily networking equipment, is my understanding.

And then he would create false shipping systems where he would pretend that the final destination of the technology was in the UAE, I believe, or countries in Europe.

And in fact, the technology was then shipped from those destinations onto its final destination in Iran.

That's the part that was illegal was the fact that he was sending this stuff to Iran because it was sensitive technology.

The raid was actually conducted by criminal investigators with the IRS.

There were definitely tax abnormalities with this guy's business.

So this guy was the CEO and founder of a tech company.

He lived in a $35 million mansion and he was reporting $20,000 in annual income to the IRS.

So it's my guess that this may have been what tipped them off, you know?

Sure.

It was quite an unusual raid in the sense that it took place in an upscale and exclusive gated community above the Pacific Ocean, populated by...