MIAMI – Federal agents arrested a Turkish national in South Florida over the weekend after they said he was involved in a multi-million dollar conspiracy to illegally sell Venezuelan oil in the U.S., in violation of sanctions against the regime of Nicolás Maduro.
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Authorities said they took Taskin Torlak, 37, into custody as he tried to fly home from Miami. He was later booked into the Broward County jail on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Torlak and others “devised and implemented a complex scheme to violate and evade U.S. sanctions related to petroleum products from Venezuela and Iran.”
“The scheme included obfuscating the identities of tankers moving the oil by re-naming and re-flagging vessels, covering vessel names with paint or blankets, and turning off the electronics that track vessels’ locations for the safety of ships and their crews,” a news release states.
Torlak and his co-conspirators, authorities said, received “tens of millions of dollars” from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A, also known as PDVSA, for transporting the oil.
They said he and the others then “hid the ultimate beneficiaries of the related transactions from U.S. financial institutions, who then unwittingly processed payments in furtherance of the scheme.”
Prosecutors said Torlak and his co-conspirators “explicitly discussed” the need to conceal their actions from the U.S. government.
He faces one count of conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
“The Justice Department will continue to hold accountable those involved in criminal efforts to circumvent sanctions imposed on the Maduro regime,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said in the news release.
Torlak was no longer listed in Broward jail records as of Monday afternoon.