New Jersey man pleads guilty to smuggling scheme to aid Russian war effort

NEW YORK — A New Jersey man who was among seven people charged with smuggling electronic components to aid Russia’s war effort pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and other charges, authorities said.

Vadim Ermolenko, 43, faces up to 30 years in prison for his role in a transnational procurement and money laundering network that sought to acquire sensitive electronics for the Russian military and intelligence services, Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said in a statement.

Ermolenko, who lives in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey and is a dual US-Russian citizen, was indicted along with six other people in December 2022.

Prosecutors said the conspirators worked with two Moscow companies controlled by Russian intelligence agencies to acquire electronic components from the United States that have civilian applications but could also be used in nuclear and hypersonic weapons production and in quantum computing.

The export of the technology violated U.S. sanctions, prosecutors said.

The prosecution was coordinated through the Justice Department’s KleptoCapture Task Force, an interagency entity tasked with enforcing sanctions imposed in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that Ermolenko “joins nearly two dozen other criminals our KleptoCapture Task Force has prosecuted in American courtrooms over the past two and a half years for facilitating Russian military aggression.”

A letter seeking comment was sent to Ermolenko’s lawyer at the federal prosecutor’s office.

Prosecutors said Ermolenko helped set up shell companies and bank accounts in the United States to move money and goods under export controls. Money from one of his accounts was used to buy export-controlled sniper bullets that were intercepted in Estonia before they could be smuggled into Russia, they said.

One of Ermolenko’s co-defendants, Alexei Breiman of Merrimack, New Hampshire, previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and is awaiting sentencing.

Another, Vadim Konoshchenok, a suspected employee of the Russian Federal Security Service, was arrested in Estonia and extradited to the United States. He was later released from U.S. custody as part of a prisoner exchange involving Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovitch and others.

The other four named in the indictment are Russian citizens who remain at large, prosecutors said.