Federal authorities arrested a 44-year-old Iranian national at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday, accusing her of brokering the sale of armed drones, bombs, bomb fuses, assault weapons, and millions of rounds of ammunition manufactured by Iran and destined for Sudan, all without ever obtaining a U.S. license to handle any of it.
Shamim Mafi, a lawful permanent resident who has lived in Woodland Hills, California, was stopped as she prepared to board a flight to Istanbul, Fox News Digital reported. A newly unsealed 68-page criminal complaint lays out what prosecutors describe as a years-long scheme to funnel Iranian-made weapons to Sudan’s military on behalf of the Islamic regime, routed through shell companies and foreign bank channels designed to dodge American sanctions.
The charge: conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, under 50 U.S.C. § 1705. If convicted, Mafi faces up to 20 years in federal prison.
The numbers in the complaint are not small. Prosecutors allege Mafi brokered a contract worth more than $70.6 million for the sale of Iranian-made Mohajer-6 armed drones to Sudan’s Ministry of Defense. She also allegedly helped arrange the sale of 55,000 bomb fuses to the Sudanese military, plus multiple ammunition deals, one involving 10 million rounds of AK-47 ammunition and a separate proposed contract for 240 million rounds.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli announced the arrest on X on Sunday:
“Last night, Shamim Mafi, 44, of Woodland Hills, was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport for trafficking arms on behalf of the government of Iran. She is charged with a violation of 50 U.S.C. § 1705 for brokering the sale of drones, bombs, bomb fuses, and millions of rounds of ammunition manufactured by Iran and sold to Sudan.”
Essayli added that Mafi became a lawful permanent resident in 2016 and is presumed innocent until proven guilty. She was expected to make her initial appearance Monday afternoon in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles.
Court documents filed by the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office describe an operation that stretched across multiple countries. The complaint states Mafi and alleged co-conspirators used an Oman-based company, Atlas International Business LLC, to facilitate the transactions. Payments were routed through Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, a layered financial trail that investigators say was designed to evade U.S. sanctions.
The Associated Press reported that Atlas International Business received more than $7 million in payments in 2025 alone. Court documents also allege Mafi submitted a letter of intent to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to purchase the bomb fuses bound for Sudan.
The complaint paints Mafi not as a freelance operator but as someone embedded in Tehran’s intelligence and military networks. During interviews with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers and the FBI, Mafi acknowledged communicating with an officer of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, identified in the filing only as “MOIS Officer-1.”
Records obtained under a search warrant show approximately 62 bidirectional contacts between Mafi and that officer’s phone numbers from December 2022 through June 2025. That is more than two and a half years of sustained contact with an arm of the Iranian state that the U.S. government has long designated as a threat to national security.
Mafi herself, the complaint says, told investigators she is “more useful to them [i.e., MOIS] in Iran than in the United States.” The filing alleges she coordinated with figures tied to Iran’s government, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and traveled frequently between the U.S., Iran, Turkey, and Oman.
The complaint describes the scheme as operating from multiple locations, including within the Central District of California, meaning the alleged sanctions violations were planned, at least in part, from American soil. Federal agents said Mafi never obtained the required U.S. licenses to broker transactions involving Iranian goods or defense articles.
That a green card holder could allegedly run an international arms pipeline from a residential address in Woodland Hills, while maintaining regular contact with Iranian intelligence, raises hard questions about how well the vetting process works for permanent residents who travel frequently to adversary nations. Mafi was granted permanent U.S. residency in California under former President Barack Obama in 2016, Fox News Digital noted.
The complaint says Mafi was scheduled to depart LAX for Istanbul on April 18. Investigators believed evidence of the alleged scheme would be found on her person and at her Woodland Hills residence. She was stopped before she could leave the country.
The New York Post reported that prosecutors say Mafi used front companies and foreign channels to help conceal the transactions, and that court records confirm her direct contact with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
Breitbart noted the complaint alleges Mafi and a co-conspirator operated the Oman-based Atlas International Business to traffic weapons and ammunition, with more than $7 million in payments flowing through the company in 2025.
The case lands at a moment when federal law enforcement has been stepping up efforts against fraud and criminal operations that exploit legitimate-looking business structures. In a separate federal bust, authorities recently charged eight individuals in a $50 million hospice fraud scheme, a reminder that large-scale criminal enterprises often hide behind ordinary-looking fronts.
Several questions remain unanswered. The complaint does not publicly identify the alleged co-conspirators by name, referring only to Mafi’s coordination with unnamed figures. Whether additional arrests are forthcoming is unclear. The identity of “MOIS Officer-1” remains redacted, and the filing does not specify which assault weapons were part of the alleged deals.
The Washington Times reported that the drone contract alone was valued at $70 million, underscoring the scale of the alleged operation. Newsmax confirmed the sanctions charge and the potential 20-year sentence.
The FBI affidavit was prepared by a redacted member of the Iran Counterintelligence Squad of the Bureau’s Los Angeles Field Office, a detail that signals the seriousness with which federal investigators treated the case. This was not a routine customs stop. It was a counterintelligence operation.
Similar patterns, criminal operations concealed behind legitimate-seeming businesses, have surfaced in cases across the country, from a decade-old Philadelphia drug ring hidden behind a fake coffee shop to organized fraud rings that exploit federal benefit programs.
The Mafi case also raises a broader concern about the intersection of immigration status and national security. A lawful permanent resident, living in a quiet Los Angeles suburb, allegedly spent years brokering weapons for a hostile foreign power, while maintaining dozens of contacts with an intelligence officer of that same regime. The system that granted her residency did not catch what federal agents now say was happening in plain sight.
Federal prosecutors have taken pains to note that Mafi is presumed innocent. That is how the system works, and it should. But if even half of what the 68-page complaint alleges holds up in court, this case is a stark reminder that serious criminal schemes do not always look the part, and that the people running them sometimes carry American green cards.
When someone tells federal agents she is “more useful” to a foreign intelligence service overseas than at home in California, the question isn’t whether the system failed. It’s how long it took to notice.
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