California Exporter Settles Criminal and Civil Charges for Illegal Exports of High Performance Oscilloscopes to Israel

The U.S. Department of Commerce today announced that Metric Equipment Sales (Metric) of Hayward , California , has agreed to settle criminal and civil charges that it exported oscilloscopes from the United States to Israel in violation of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR).

On March 21, 2005 , Metric pled guilty to one felony count of violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by exporting an oscilloscope to Israel without a license. The Department of Commerce controls the export and re-export of oscilloscopes, which are used for testing and assembly of electronic equipment, for nuclear non-proliferation and anti-terrorism reasons. Metric was sentenced to pay a criminal fine in the amount of $50,000, placed on three years probation and ordered to serve 250 hours community service.

“The United States vigorously enforces export controls on sophisticated technologies that could be diverted to use in nuclear weapons development. This case illustrates the responsibility placed on exporters of sensitive technologies to comply with these controls,” said Wendy L. Wysong, Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement.

In the related administrative case, Metric agreed to pay the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) a $150,000 civil penalty, and to a suspended five year denial of its export privileges under the EAR. Metric also will perform an audit of its internal export compliance program and forward the results to BIS’s Office of Export Enforcement. BIS suspended the five-year denial of export privileges provided that Metric commits no further violations of the EAR.

BIS charged that between January 2001 and December 2001, Metric committed a total of 31 violations of the EAR. Specifically, BIS alleged that Metric committed ten violations by exporting items without the required Department of Commerce licenses, ten violations by transferring items with the knowledge that a violation of the EAR would occur and 11 violations by making false statements on Shipper’s Export Declarations. Information developed during the course of the investigation showed that Metric had in the past applied for and obtained similar licenses.

Acting Assistant Secretary Wysong commended the Special Agents of BIS’s San Jose Field Office for their work on this investigation.