The FBI has arrested a California tech CEO living in a lavish $35 million mansion after federal authorities accused him of secretly supplying U.S. technology and equipment to Iran’s nuclear and military establishment while allegedly hiding millions of dollars from the IRS.
63-year-old Jamshid Ghomi, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen and CEO of the Tehran-based tech firm Faraz Pardaz Rayaneh Co. Ltd. (FPR), was taken into custody on federal charges of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
He faces up to 20 years in federal prison. Prosecutors are already moving to seize his mansion and other assets purchased with Iranian blood money.
According to the Department of Justice, he procured hundreds of controlled U.S.-origin items through eBay, PayPal, and direct purchases from suppliers in Minnesota and Nebraska, then routed them through front companies in the United Arab Emirates to Iran — all without the required licenses from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
A significant portion of the equipment went to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) — the regime entity responsible for Iran’s centrifuge and uranium-enrichment programs — and to Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics, along with affiliated military and defense-electronics entities.
Between 2014 and 2018 alone, Ghomi and his co-conspirators smuggled more than 250 metric tons of networking equipment into Iran, hiding U.S.-origin items inside larger shipments and keeping Ghomi’s name off paperwork.
Internal communications revealed Ghomi and his associates referred to Iran as the “Motherland.”
While Ghomi lived like royalty in one of California’s most expensive enclaves, he was systematically looting the system and cheating American taxpayers.
From 2011 to 2024, Ghomi moved more than $15 million in proceeds from his illegal Iran business into his U.S. bank accounts and a construction escrow account used to build his mansion. He falsely reported those funds to the IRS as a foreign inheritance.
His federal tax returns told a completely different story:
- His highest reported income in any single year was just $20,684.
- He fraudulently claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit — a benefit intended for low- to moderate-income working individuals and families — in seven different tax years.
- Over the same period, he reported more than $1.7 million in home mortgage interest deductions and $1.25 million in state and local real estate taxes.
The mansion itself was funded with dirty money. Ghomi purchased a vacant lot in Newport Coast in 2010 for $4.49 million and spent another $10.49 million constructing the massive residence. More than $7 million in foreign-source wires — many from the same trading companies and exchange houses tied to his Iran operation — flowed into the escrow account between 2011 and 2015.
Hellbound and Down 