Summary

On February 21, 2014, Hasan Ibrahim, owner of Medchem, was sentenced in U.S. District Court, San Francisco, California, to 30 days in prison followed by three years supervised release. He was also assessed a penalty of $2,200. Ibrahim was convicted on July 3, 2013, for attempted placement of a destructive substance on an aircraft, transportation of hazardous materials without shipping papers, transportation of hazardous materials without labels, the failure to file export information, and attempted smuggling of goods.

The investigation revealed that Ibrahim attempted to ship 64 boxes that contained hazardous materials to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The shipment was detained and later seized by Customs and Border Protection. Several of the hazardous materials were forbidden to be transported on passenger aircraft and two chemicals were forbidden to be transported on any aircraft. 

We conducted this investigation jointly with the FBI, with assistance from the FAA.