New Jersey man pleads guilty in smuggling scheme intended to aid Russia’s war effort
NEW YORK– A New Jersey man who was among seven people accused of smuggling electronic components Russia pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and other charges, authorities said.
Vadim Yermolenko, 43, faces up to 30 years in prison for his role in a transnational procurement and money laundering network that sought to acquire sensitive electronics for Russian military and intelligence services, Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said in a statement.
Yermolenko, who lives in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey and has dual U.S. and Russian citizenship, was indicted in December 2022 along with six other people.
Prosecutors said the conspirators worked with two Moscow-based companies controlled by Russian intelligence services to acquire electronic components in the U.S. that have civilian uses but could also be used to make nuclear and hypersonic weapons and in quantum computers.
The export of the technology violated U.S. sanctions, prosecutors said.
The prosecution was coordinated by the Justice Department’s KleptoCapture Task Force, an interagency entity dedicated to enforcing sanctions imposed after the Russians invaded Ukraine.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that Yermolenko “joins the nearly two dozen other criminals that our Task Force KleptoCapture has brought to justice in American courtrooms over the past two and a half years for enabling Russian military aggression.”
A message seeking comment was sent to Yermolenko’s attorney at the federal public defender’s office.
Prosecutors said Yermolenko helped set up shell companies and U.S. bank accounts to move money and export-controlled goods. Money from one of his accounts was used to buy export-controlled sniper bullets that were intercepted in Estonia before they could be smuggled into Russia, they said.
One of Yermolenko’s co-defendants, Alexey Brayman of Merrimack, New Hampshire, previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and is awaiting sentencing.
Another, Vadim Konoshchenok, a suspected officer in Russia’s Federal Security Service, was arrested in Estonia and extradited to the United States. He was later released from US custody as part of a prisoner exchange including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and others.
The four others named in the indictment are Russian citizens who remain at large, prosecutors said.