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Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, of Japan, entered the plea in Manhattan
federal court to weapons and narcotics trafficking charges that
carry a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and the
possibility of life behind bars. Sentencing was set for April 9.
Prosecutors say Ebisawa didn’t know he was communicating in 2021
and 2022 with a confidential source for the Drug Enforcement
Administration along with the source’s associate, who posed as
an Iranian general. Ebisawa was arrested in April 2022 in
Manhattan during a DEA sting.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a release that the
prosecution demonstrated the DEA's “unparalleled ability to
dismantle the world's most dangerous criminal networks.”
She said the investigation “exposed the shocking depths of
international organized crime from trafficking nuclear materials
to fueling the narcotics trade and arming violent insurgents.”
Acting U.S. Attorney Edward Y. Kim said Ebisawa admitted at his
plea that he “brazenly trafficked nuclear material, including
weapons-grade plutonium, out of Burma.”
“At the same time, he worked to send massive quantities of
heroin and methamphetamine to the United States in exchange for
heavy-duty weaponry such as surface-to-air missiles to be used
on battlefields in Burma," he added.
Court papers said Ebisawa told the DEA's confidential source in
2020 that he had access to a large quantity of nuclear materials
that he wanted to sell. To support his claim, he sent the source
photographs depicting rocky substances with Geiger counters
measuring radiation, claiming they contained thorium and
uranium, the papers said.
The nuclear material came from an unidentified leader of an
“ethnic insurgent group” in Myanmar who had been mining uranium
in the country, prosecutors said. Ebisawa had proposed that the
leader sell uranium through him in order to fund a weapons
purchase from the general, court documents allege.
Prosecutors said samples of the alleged nuclear materials were
obtained and a U.S. federal lab found they contained uranium,
thorium and plutonium, and that the “the isotope composition of
the plutonium” was weapons-grade, meaning enough of it would be
suitable for use in a nuclear weapon.
An email seeking comment was sent to Ebisawa’s attorneys.
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