Arash Einolghozati

Convicted and sentenced. Arash Einolghozati was sentenced on November 12, 2026 to 24 months in federal prison for transferring funds from the United States to Iran without a license from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. The Justice Department release announcing the sentence did not state whether the conviction followed a plea or a trial.

Introduction

Arash Einolghozati is a 38-year-old man from Waialua, on Oahu’s North Shore, who was sentenced on November 12, 2026 to two years in federal prison for moving money from the United States to Iran in violation of U.S. economic sanctions. Senior United States District Judge Helen Gillmor imposed the 24-month term, to be followed by three years of supervised release, and added a 15,000-dollar fine. United States Attorney Ken Sorenson of the District of Hawaii announced the sentence, which federal prosecutors framed as part of the government’s enforcement of the licensing regime that governs virtually all transfers of funds to Iran.

Background Information

Under the U.S. sanctions framework described in the Justice Department’s release, sending funds to Iran without a license from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is unlawful, and prosecutors said Einolghozati knew that rule applied to what he was doing. According to court records cited by the release, Einolghozati engaged in multiple money transfers intended to move money from the United States to Iran over a period extending through at least April 2022. He sent both government-issued currency and cryptocurrency from within the United States to recipients he knew were in Iran, or to recipients he knew would forward the funds onward to individuals in Iran.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

The conduct at the center of the case was a sustained pattern of transfers rather than a single transaction. In each instance, prosecutors said, Einolghozati knew it was unlawful to send the funds without an OFAC license and did so anyway. In total, he transferred more than 226,000 dollars to Iran, moving the money through a mix of conventional currency and cryptocurrency that made the flows harder to trace to their destination. The FBI investigated the case, and the sentence was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael F. Albanese.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The case attracted attention in Hawaii largely because of its unusual subject: a North Shore resident prosecuted not for drugs or violence but for the geopolitics of his remittances. The Justice Department’s announcement gave no victim statements and no defense comment, and the release did not state whether Einolghozati entered a plea or went to trial before Judge Gillmor sentenced him. The concrete consequences were fixed by the court: 24 months in federal prison, three years of supervised release afterward, and a 15,000-dollar fine. The announcement also placed the case on the financial-fraud docket of the U.S. Attorney’s Office rather than among violent-crime matters, reflecting how sanctions violations are charged.

Current Status

Einolghozati, 38, is serving a two-year federal prison sentence imposed November 12, 2026, to be followed by three years of supervised release, and remains liable for the 15,000-dollar fine the court imposed. The transfers that formed the basis of the conviction were complete years before the sentence, ending no later than the period through April 2022 described in court records, and the FBI’s investigation connected the transfers to him through the recipients he used. No appeal was announced in the Justice Department release, and no further court dates were listed.

Impact on Their Career/Life

A federal sanctions conviction changes Einolghozati’s life well beyond the two-year term: he is now a convicted felon with a supervised-release obligation that will govern his conduct for three years after custody, and the conviction puts any future cross-border financial activity he undertakes under a legal cloud. The fine adds a fixed debt to the sentence. For the wider community of diaspora families that send money abroad, the case is an example of the line prosecutors say cannot be crossed: funds routed, even through intermediaries and cryptocurrency, to a sanctioned country without a Treasury license. For Einolghozati personally, the practical effect of the conviction is that more than a quarter-million dollars in past transfers to Iran now stands, in the government’s accounting, as the documented basis for a prison record that will follow him after his release.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Hawaii, “North Shore Man Sentenced to Two Years in Prison for Sending Money to Iran in Violation of U.S. Sanctions,” November 13, 2026 — source