Mozaffar Khazaee, a former Manchester, Connecticut resident and defense contractor has been arrested by federal authorities on charges that he attempted to smuggle classified technical data on a variety of military projects—including the new F-35 Lightning II—out of the country and into Iran.


Khazaee is a naturalized U.S. citizen from Iran and holds citizenship in both countries. He had worked for at least three different defense contractors over the past few years, including as recently as August of last year, according to Customs and Border authorities. Sensitive information from all three of these companies were found in the 44 boxes of materials he recently shipped from Connecticut to a California holding company. They were then to be loaded onto an Iran-bound ship in November, had a Customs and Border Protection team not examined the shipment and discovered its contents.

Khazaee himself was nabbed last Thursday on a connecting flight in Newark from Indianapolis to, you guessed it, Tehran. [Stars and Stripes]