Friday Aliso Viejo residents woke up to hollering and the loud banging on a neighbor’s front door.
Turns out that it was FBI agents wielding a battering ram paying a visit to 71-year-old Khosrow Afghahi, who was arrested for suspicion of illegally exporting technology to Iran.
“I saw about eight FBI agents,” said Thomas Swann, a resident in the quiet Orange County neighborhood known for luxury homes with manicured lawns. “At first, I thought it was police. Then I looked and saw they were FBI!” Swan said.
Local resident Denise Cofey observed, as Afghahi was being hustled into a police car, that “They were wearing the green vests, they had the guns strapped, they had weapons pulled.”
CBS Los Angeles reported that in a 24-page indictment “the Department of Justice charged Afghahi and four others with facilitating the illegal export of high-tech microelectronics, uninterruptible power supplies and other commodities to Iran, in violation of the International Emergency Powers Act.”
The FBI said that Afghahi and the other suspects worked for different corporations some overseas and one in Houston. Cofey said that if the allegations prove true she would not be surprised. She stated that the house “would be vacant for months on end, like three months on end, then people would show up again.”
Two more suspects are being sought in connection with Afghahi, but investigators believe that they may have escaped overseas.