Ex-FAA Contractor Sentenced to Federal Prison

A former FAA contractor was sentenced to one year in federal prison on Tuesday for passing sensitive information to the government of Iran.

Abouzar Rahmati, 43, a naturalized citizen and resident of Great Falls, Virginia, pleaded guilty in April to acting as a foreign agent without registering with the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, and conspiracy to do the same. Rahmati allegedly gave nonpublic information about American aviation and solar energy development to his contacts in Iran’s intelligence service over the course of about seven years from 2017-24.

In addition to his prison term, Rahmati will serve three years of supervised release.

Justice Department officials said Rahmati offered his services to Iran through a senior Iranian government official with whom he attended college. He later traveled to Iran, met with intelligence officers, and agreed to obtain information about the solar energy industry.

In the following months, he passed on open-source and nonpublic data about solar energy technology. As a cover, he disguised his communications with intelligence officers as academic correspondence.

Security Breach

At some point, and with the Iranian government’s prompting, Rahmati downloaded sensitive data from his employer’s files concerning the National Aerospace System (NAS), NAS airport surveillance radar systems, and radio frequency data. He allegedly took this information to Iran in person and gave it to government officials in April 2022.

Later that same month, he passed on additional information about the FAA, U.S. airports and air traffic control towers, and solar panels to Iranian intelligence through his brother, who lives in Iran.

The federal government has not disclosed which FAA contractor Rahmati was working for or what his job was.

Rahmati faced a maximum of 10 years in prison for acting as a foreign agent without prior notification and up to five years for conspiracy.