A Pakistani-American man has pleaded guilty to criminal charges in theDistrict Court for the Northern District of Illinois after he confessed toillegally exporting sensitive computer hardware from the US to a topPakistani nuclear research organization.
He pleaded guilty to conspiring to export goods from the US withoutobtaining a license from the Department of Commerce and to submit falseexport information. The conviction is punishable by a maximum sentence offive years in federal prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.
According to details, 66-year old Obaidullah Syed, resident of Northbrook,supplied high-performance computing platforms and servers to PakistanAtomic Energy Commission (PAEC) between 2006 and 2015.
He also lied to the US manufacturers that the computer hardware beingexported from the US was only intended for Pakistani educationalinstitutions. However, in reality, he knew that the end-user of thehardware would be either the PAEC or a research institute that trained itsscientists and engineers.
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Since Obaidullah misinformed them, the US manufacturers submitted exportdocuments to the Commerce Department which showed false end-users for theUS-made goods.
Obaidullah had owned two companies: Pakistan-based Business SystemInternational Pvt. Ltd. and Chicago-based Business System International USA.
