A U.S. district court judge sentenced Abouzar Rahmati, 43, of Great Falls, Va., to a year in prison and three subsequent years of supervised release for spying for Iran, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday.
Rahmati, who was a contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration, pleaded guilty in April to providing at least 172 gigabytes of classified information about U.S. solar energy to Iranian regime officials in 2022. A U.S. citizen, he had faced up to 15 years in prison.
“By secretly doing the bidding of the Iranian government, Mr. Rahmati violated the trust placed in him as a U.S. citizen and as a federal contractor with access to sensitive information,” stated Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
“Ensuring that sensitive U.S. information does not fall into the hands of hostile foreign intelligence services remains one of our highest priorities,” she stated.
