SAN ANTONIO — The order requested microwave absorbers and circuit board laminates from an unnamed Central Texas company and said the buyer was shipping them to New Zealand.

In reality, authorities said, the purchaser was an intermediary circumventing trade embargoes and international sanctions to provide the parts to Iran so it could use them for nefarious purposes.

The parts have dual-use military and civilian capability, but investigators worry that they could be used in missile guidance systems, secure tactical radio communications and military radar networks.

In an investigation that took years, federal prosecutors in San Antonio recently charged two employees of a Taiwanese company, Kunlin Hsieh and Agris Indricevs, with crimes related to “transshipping” — shipping goods to an intermediary country to disguise their ultimate location, a country barred from receiving U.S. goods because it sponsors terrorism or is an enemy of the United States.

Hsieh, sales manager for JunBon Enterprises Co. Ltd., which makes printed circuit boards, and Indricevs, who does international sales for the company, are charged in San Antonio with helping an Iranian suspect who is not in custody, Mehrdad Foomanie, sidestep U.S. trade embargoes.

The case, developed with the help of San Antonio native Ryan Suranna, who also worked for JunBon, is the latest example of what U.S. officials describe as a worrisome trend: Overseas companies and middlemen helping Iran illicitly obtain crucial components from American suppliers in violation of U.S. export controls and international sanctions.

“At defendant Hsieh's direction, defendant Indricevs and (Suranna) acted as brokers and conduits for (Foomanie) to buy items that had been manufactured in the United States and have those items unlawfully exported to Iran,” according to court records.

Dozens of people have been prosecuted for violating such embargoes in the past decade. A handful of transshipping cases are being investigated in San Antonio, experts said.

The contraband has included parts for military aircraft, batteries used in surface-to-air missile systems, underwater locator beacons and other technology with more than one purpose, according to court-filed documents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of the agencies that investigates transshipping crimes.

“It is not always about people trying to export things that are going to come back and hurt us,” said Jerry Robinette, who was special agent in charge of ICE in San Antonio from 2008 through 2012. “We had occasions where individuals were transshipping oil and others buying it, and it was ultimately going to a prohibited country. Money was used to fund those countries we were at odds with.

“The biggest concern about something being shipped to a country we have an embargo with is it will be used, converted or altered to hurt our soldiers or interests overseas, or our country itself,” he added. “That's the worst-case scenario.”

Destination: Iran

The Treasury Department has blacklisted hundreds of companies and dozens of individuals around the world, limiting their ability to travel or do business with most banks, for allegedly helping prohibited countries evade sanctions.

The Justice Department has focused on prosecuting those who sell the prohibited countries certain technology purchased from U.S. companies that could be used, for instance, in nuclear weapons or to help out those countries' militaries. Last month, the department prosecuted a French bank used as a conduit for some of the illegal exports.

About 40 percent of the cases involve Iran as the ultimate destination of U.S.-origin items, according to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, one of the agencies that helps regulate exports and enforce laws that control them.

“Although international sanctions have significantly diminished Iran's ability to procure sophisticated dual-use and military items, its complex web of front companies and related financing rings remains a significant threat,” David W. Mills, assistant secretary of BIS, said at a recent export control forum. “This front company network is masked further through the use of transshipment hubs where the sheer volume of trade makes enforcement a challenge.”

The transshipment countries have included the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, China and Taiwan.

Between 2005 and 2007, for example, ICE investigators cracked a San Antonio case in which intermediaries sought zinc/silver oxide batteries that could be used in Hawk missile systems that can down aircraft or other missiles.

Three men, including Christopher Tappin, an exporter who was president of a golfing club in England, were prosecuted. The group was to use the Netherlands to mask Iran as the batteries' destination. One defendant, Robert Caldwell of Oregon, met with an undercover ICE agent at a hotel near the Alamo to broker a deal for 50 batteries.

Caldwell was convicted and sent to prison, but it would take five years to catch and extradite Tappin from England. He argued that the batteries were for electroplating by a Dutch chemical company.

Tappin's extradition was highly publicized in his home country, where Prime Minister David Cameron was left to answer questions about the fairness of the extradition treaty between the U.K. and the U.S.

“These cases, they are not easy and they take time to develop,” said Robinette, the former ICE boss in San Antonio. “These people say, 'As long as I don't approach the U.S., I'm OK.' They may choose their base in countries that we don't have an extradition treaty with or are very careful where they travel and how they operate.”

Robinette said investigations may consist of seizing items headed for a prohibited country or infiltrating “these webs to catch individuals red-handed.”

In the Tappin inquiry, undercover ICE agents set up a front company that was contacted by Tappin, prompting him to argue — unsuccessfully — that he was entrapped. He pleaded guilty to violating embargo laws and was sentenced in 2013 to 33 months in federal prison.

Growing Concern

In the past, Tehran relied on front companies in Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and countries in Europe, experts say. But some of those countries' governments recently cracked down on the smuggling of technology with military applications amid growing international concern that Iran may be planning to build nuclear weapons.

Businessmen and women from China, Taiwan and Singapore have partly filled the void.

In 2010, Taiwanese businesswoman Susan Yip, then 35, was arrested by ICE and FBI agents in San Antonio and later admitted that from October 2007 to June 2011 she helped Foomanie, the Iranian suspect, and Mehrdad Ansari of the United Arab Emirates ship sensitive military parts to Iran using other countries. Ansari and Foomanie remain fugitives.

Court records said they bought or attempted to buy from companies around the world more than 105,000 parts, valued at about $2.6 million. Yip and her partners conducted 599 transactions with 63 U.S. companies for parts without notifying them that the items were being shipped to Iran.

“I had no intention to hurt anyone,” a crying Yip said when she got two years in prison during sentencing in San Antonio.

Among the international companies Yip dealt with was JunBon Enterprises in Taiwan, which is named in the latest San Antonio case.

JunBon employees Hsieh and Indricevs were arrested in mid-August in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and are being transferred to San Antonio, where they were indicted on charges of conspiracy and attempt to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as well as Iranian sanctions. Both charges carry up to 20 years in prison.

“I'm going to do my talking in the courtroom,” said San Antonio lawyer Gerry Goldstein, who represents Hsieh.

Lawyers for Indricevs didn't return calls. Suranna's charging documents are sealed, and his lawyer, Scott McCrum, declined comment. His case is among several that have not been made public because indictments are sealed or defendants are secretly cooperating.

“Our investigations ... have uncovered a growing number of networks illegally exporting restricted U.S.-origin technology, including munitions and materials with nuclear applications, to Iran, through front companies in Asia, China and Hong Kong,” according to one Justice Department memo.

This year, the U.S. took aim at another cog in the export system: It prosecuted BNP Paribas, a banking institution in Paris used as a conduit for some of the illicit exports. BNP Paribas pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to violate one of those laws, the International Economic Powers Act, for BNP's role in processing billions of dollars in transactions on behalf of Sudanese, Iranian and Cuban entities subject to U.S. economic sanctions from 2004 to 2012.

“Everybody in the food chain — from the people who manufacture the item to the people involved in shipping it and the financials — they all have to do their due diligence,” Robinette said. “They all have the position to see the same thing through different filters. ... You can't turn a blind eye to this.”

gcontreras@express-news.net