Yakuza Guilty in Drugs, Arms & Yellowcake Trade

A member of the Yakuza crime syndicate has pleaded guilty to trafficking nuclear materials, including weapons-grade plutonium, from Burma. The scheme was uncovered during a DEA investigation into narcotics and firearms trafficking.

Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, of Japan, pleaded guilty in Manhattan to conspiring with a network of associates to traffic nuclear materials, including uranium and weapons-grade plutonium, from Burma to other countries, as well as to international narcotics trafficking and weapons charges.   Ebisawa pleaded guilty to six counts contained in the superseding indictment issued in February 2024. [11799]

In the course of this conspiracy, Ebisawa and his confederates showed samples of nuclear materials in Thailand to a DEA undercover agent (“UC-1”), who was posing as a narcotics and weapons trafficker. With the assistance of Thai authorities, the nuclear samples were seized and subsequently transferred to the custody of U.S. law enforcement. A U.S. nuclear forensic laboratory later analyzed the samples and confirmed that the samples contain uranium and weapons-grade plutonium.

According to the court documents and evidence presented at court, since at least in or about 2019, the DEA investigated Ebisawa in connection with large-scale narcotics and weapons trafficking. During the investigation, Ebisawa unwittingly introduced an undercover DEA agent (UC-1), posing as a narcotics and weapons trafficker, to Ebisawa’s international network of criminal associates, which spanned Japan, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, and the United States, among other places, for the purpose of arranging large-scale narcotics and weapons transactions. Ebisawa and his network, including his co-defendants, negotiated multiple narcotics and weapons transactions with UC-1.

Ebisawa conspired to broker the purchase, from UC-1, of U.S.-made surface-to-air missiles, as well as other heavy-duty weaponry, intended for multiple ethnic armed groups in Burma (including the leader of an ethnic insurgent group in Burma (CC-1)), and to accept large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine for distribution as partial payment for the weapons. Ebisawa understood the weapons to have been manufactured in the U.S. and taken from U.S. military bases in Afghanistan. Ebisawa planned for the heroin and methamphetamine to be distributed in the New York market.

Beginning in early 2020, Ebisawa informed UC-1 and a DEA confidential source (CS-1) that Ebisawa had access to a large quantity of nuclear materials that he wanted to sell. Later that year, Ebisawa sent UC-1 a series of photographs depicting rocky substances with Geiger counters measuring radiation, as well as pages of what Ebisawa represented to be lab analyses indicating the presence of thorium and uranium in the depicted substances.

In response to Ebisawa’s repeated inquiries, UC-1 agreed, as part of the DEA’s investigation, to help Ebisawa broker the sale of his nuclear materials to UC-1’s associate, who was posing as an Iranian general (the General), for use in a nuclear weapons program. Ebisawa then offered to supply the General with “plutonium” that would be even “better” and more “powerful” than uranium for this purpose. Ebisawa further proposed, together with two other co-conspirators (CC-2 and CC-3), to UC-1 that CC-1 sell uranium to the General, through Ebisawa, to fund CC-1’s weapons purchase.

With the assistance of Thai authorities, the nuclear samples were seized and subsequently transferred to the custody of U.S. law enforcement. A nuclear forensic laboratory in the United States examined the nuclear samples and determined that both samples contain detectable quantities of uranium, thorium, and plutonium. In particular, the laboratory determined that the isotope composition of the plutonium found in the nuclear samples is weapons-grade, meaning that the plutonium, if produced in sufficient quantities, would be suitable for use in a nuclear weapon.