WASHINGTON — A Florida woman was sentenced to 15 months in prison for her part in a conspiracy to defraud the United States by procuring and shipping critical Department of Defense components, conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act, violating the Export Control Reform Act, and violating the Arms Export Control Act following a multiagency investigation with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Tampa.
Yuksel Senbol, 36, of Orlando, was also convicted for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and money laundering. She was also ordered by the court to forfeit $275,430.90, the proceeds of her fraud and money laundering scheme. Senbol pleaded guilty on May 7.
According to facts taken from public filings, beginning in approximately April 2019, Senbol operated a front company in the Middle District of Florida called Mason Engineering Parts LLC. She used this front company to assist her co-conspirators, Mehmet Ozcan and Onur Simsek, to fraudulently procure contracts to supply critical military components to the Department of Defense. These components were intended for use in the Navy Nimitz and Ford Class Aircraft Carriers, Navy Submarines, Marine Corps Armored Vehicles and Army M-60 Series Tank and Abrahams Battle Tanks, among other weapons systems.
To fraudulently procure the government contracts, Senbol and her co-conspirators falsely represented to the U.S. government and U.S. military contractors that Mason Engineering Parts LLC was a vetted and qualified manufacturer of military components, when in fact, the parts were being manufactured by Ozcan and Simsek in Turkey. As Senbol knew, Simsek’s involvement had to be concealed from the U.S. government because he had been debarred from contracting with the U.S. government after being convicted of a virtually identical scheme in the Southern District of Florida.
In order to enable Ozcan and Simsek to manufacture the components in Turkey, Senbol assisted them in obtaining sensitive, export-controlled drawings of critical U.S. military technology. Using software that allowed Ozcan to remotely control her computer — and thus evade security restrictions that limited access to these sensitive military drawings to computers within the United States — Senbol knowingly facilitated the illegal export of these drawings. She did so despite having executed numerous agreements promising to safeguard the drawings from unlawful access or export, and in spite of the clear warnings on the face of each drawing that it could not be exported without obtaining a license.
Once Ozcan and Simsek manufactured the components in Turkey, they shipped them to Senbol, who repackaged them — making sure to remove any reference to their Turkish origin. The conspirators then lied about the origin of the parts to the U.S. government and a U.S. government contractor to receive payment for the parts. Senbol then laundered hundreds of thousands of dollars in criminal proceeds back to Turkey through international wire transfers.
This scheme continued until uncovered and disrupted by federal investigators. Parts supplied by Senbol were tested by the U.S. military and were determined not to conform with product specifications. Many of the components supplied to the U.S. military by Senbol were “critical application items,” meaning that failure of these components would have potentially rendered the end system inoperable.
Alleged co-conspirators Mehmet Ozcan and Onur Simsek are fugitives.
In addition to HSI Tampa, the General Services Administration’s Office of Inspector General, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the FBI and the Department of State’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls are investigating the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Daniel J. Marcet and Lindsey Schmidt for the Middle District of Florida and trial attorney Stephen Marzen of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Section are prosecuting the case.