The U.S. Department of Justice announced that two men from Texas were convicted of attempting to sell Iranian oil in violation of sanctions imposed by Washington and conspiring to commit money laundering. The department stated in a statement that "the two men who were convicted in November of last year were sentenced on Tuesday to 45 months in prison."
It added that "Zhenyu Wang (43 years old), a Chinese national, and Daniel Ray Lin (42 years old) from McKinney, Texas, conspired with accomplices to evade U.S. economic sanctions against Iran from July 2019 to February 2020 by facilitating the purchase of sanctioned oil from Iran, concealing its assets, and then selling it to a refinery in China."
Lin was the head of Stack Royalties, a Texas-based company that sells oil and gas extraction rights to investment funds and private equity firms. Lin's attorney, Paul Hitzniker, stated that "the case was based on undercover government agents who offered Lin millions of dollars in profits if he participated in the scheme, after he initially rejected their attempts."
The attorney described the case as "a glaring example of government overreach." The two men were charged along with three others in 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Court records show that at least two of the conspirators have since pleaded guilty.
