A Washington state freight-forwarding manager was sentenced to 18 months in prison for helping route controlled oil and gas equipment from the United States to Russia through intermediary countries, closing a case that prosecutors said showed how export-industry insiders can exploit the global logistics system to evade Russia controls.
Natalya Ivanovna Mazulina, also known as “Natasha Mazulina,” of Federal Way, Washington, was sentenced June 24 in federal court in Brooklyn after pleading guilty in October 2025 to conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act. U.S. The court also ordered her to forfeit $77,000 in criminal proceeds.
Mazulina was the Western regional manager of Delex Air Cargo LLC, a freight forwarding company based in Jamaica, New York, that operated through John F. Kennedy International Airport and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Prosecutors said she used that position to help move controlled industrial equipment to Russian customers despite U.S. export restrictions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The sentence follows a 12-count indictment unsealed in December 2024. At the time, prosecutors charged Mazulina with conspiracy to export controlled goods to Russia without a license, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit money laundering, exporting controlled goods without a license, filing false export documents with the U.S. government, and smuggling goods contrary to U.S. law. She was arrested Dec. 10, 2024, in Seattle. [13211]
“As alleged, Mazulina used her position as a manager of a freight forwarding company to facilitate unlawful exports to Russia through JFK airport,” then-U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said when the indictment was announced. Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said Mazulina “exploited her knowledge of the export business to falsify documents and circumvent U.S. sanctions by illegally shipping oil and gas products to Russian customers.”
According to court filings described by the Justice Department, Mazulina conspired with Russian freight-forwarding companies and others from at least December 2022 through December 2024 to ship controlled items, including industrial oil and gas equipment, from the United States to Russia through intermediary countries.
In June 2023, prosecutors said, she told colleagues that clients were paying through third-country bank accounts because “[m]ost of [her] clients [were] currently sanctioned with USA.”
The government said Mazulina concealed the scheme by submitting, and causing others to submit, false export documents to U.S. authorities. Those filings omitted that the goods were destined for Russia, information that should have been disclosed under U.S. export rules.
In announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. linked the case to Washington’s broader effort to cut off support for Russia’s energy sector.
“The Russian oil and gas industry is the lifeblood that fuels the Russian war machine,” Nocella said. “This defendant put her own profits above the national security of the United States by conspiring to illegally export industrial oil and gas equipment to Russia.”
The case also underscores the enforcement exposure facing freight forwarders, brokers and other intermediaries in export transactions. Prosecutors treated Mazulina not as a peripheral logistics provider, but as a supply-chain professional whose knowledge of export documentation, routing and payment structures enabled the alleged evasion.
The investigation involved the FBI and the Commerce Department’s Office of Export Enforcement. The December 2024 indictment was coordinated through Task Force KleptoCapture, the Justice Department initiative created in 2022 to enforce sanctions, export controls and other measures imposed in response to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The task force was disbanded in February 2025, though the Mazulina prosecution continued through the Eastern District of New York’s National Security and Cybercrime Section and the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
At the indictment stage, prosecutors included Assistant U.S. Attorneys Artie McConnell and Matthew Skurnik, Trial Attorneys Christopher M. Rigali and Adam Barry of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, and Litigation Analyst Emma Tavangari. The Justice Department’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section also assisted in the investigation.
District Court records identified the case as United States v. Mazulina, E.D.N.Y. Docket No. 24-CR-493.
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