The U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted an Iran-based procurement ring on Friday for using fake American businesses to deceive U.S. technology companies and funnel restricted military goods to Tehran.
Iranian national Ali Majd Sepehr, through his company Sorena Hushmand Samaneh Company—known as Sorena—allegedly created false U.S. business identities to defraud dozens of American IT firms, resellers, and vendors out of millions of dollars, the department said.
The network is accused of procuring network security equipment, encryption hardware and software, spectrum analyzers, and non-linear junction detectors for MODAFL-controlled entities, including Sairan Information Exchange Space Security Industries Company.
MODAFL is Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics—the agency that oversees the country’s ballistic missile and drone programs. The action marks one of the first known cases of an Iranian procurement network impersonating American businesses to directly defraud U.S. vendors as a method of obtaining export-controlled defense technology.
“The Iranian military’s brazen efforts to target and deceive American businesses demonstrate just how far the regime is willing to go to support its malign activities,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in a statement. “Treasury will continue to use all available authorities to cut off the Iranian regime’s access to the global financial system.”
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), acting alongside the Department of Commerce and the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, designated the network under the “Economic Fury” campaign.
Friday’s designation was one of several blows to Iran’s military-financial networks this week as part of the Economic Fury campaign, as nuclear negotiations between Washington and Tehran remained unresolved.
One day earlier, the Treasury sanctioned multiple Hong Kong-based front companies used to ship Iranian crude oil to China on behalf of Sepehr Energy Jahan Nama Pars Company, the oil sales arm of Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff.
“The Treasury Department will continue to increase pressure on Iranian oil sales to deprive the Iranian regime and its military of the financial resources it needs to threaten U.S. allies and partners in the Middle East,” Bessent said. “We will not allow the Iranian government to increase its oil revenue for the purpose of reconstituting its armed forces and military capabilities.”
