Plane smuggler pleads guilty to brazen Iran deal

An airplane mechanic admitted Wednesday that he tried to sneak seven airplanes from China to Iran, violating economic sanctions.

It was an out-of-the ordinary transaction, but it would have made Diocenyr Ribamar Barbosa-Santos, who piloted the scheme, very wealthy. Iran Air was to pay $136.5 million.

"I have to tell you, this is kind of an unusual crime," U.S. District Court Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley said. "I've had one other case like this, but this isn't kind of the normal crime that comes to court."

Nor does Barbosa-Santos, 52, seem to fit the profile of a sophisticated criminal.

In court, he wore a gold-colored tie and a gold band on his left hand, weeping openly at the mention of his wife and three middle-school-aged children. He described his steady climb from uneducated immigrant to a decades-long career leading a team of technicians at American Airlines in Dallas and Miami. He said he has never committed a crime before and that he sometimes takes blood-pressure medicine.

Then he pleaded guilty to violating trade embargoes with Iran, a rogue nation whose domestic aviation industry has withered under sanctions. The felony conviction carries the possibility of up to 20 years in prison and a fine twice the value of his take in the scheme, which prosecutors have not revealed.

"I'm really sorry that I'm getting so emotional," said Barbosa-Santos, who is a U.S. citizen from Brazil, through an interpreter. "When someone talks about my family, my heart beats faster."

Barbosa-Santos declined to comment after the hearing, and his attorney R. William Barner III emphasized as he has before that the crime does not involve the sale of any weapons to Iran.

Hurley scheduled a sentencing hearing for Oct. 3. After that, he told Barbosa-Santos he can start to put this behind him.

It all began in January 2012, when a confidential source told a Homeland Security Investigations agent that Barbosa-Santos was trying to broker the deal for seven Airbus A300 jetliners. In email exchanges, Barbosa-Santos, who worked 17 years repairing American Airlines planes, "outlined the terms of a financial arrangement," prosecutors said.

Barbosa-Santos organized the deal over several months through email, phone calls and meetings with the source and an undercover agent, prosecutors said. He frequently warned that their conversations were a crime. He contemplated using a bank in Zurich to back the loan on Iranian credit.

Then on Nov. 2, at the end of another meeting, the agent arrested him.

Barbosa-Santos said he lived his first 19 years in coastal Salvador, Brazil, about 1,000 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. He earned a GED in Boston and took some college courses in aviation technology and management. He worked at smaller companies as a mechanic before landing a job at American Airlines in Miami.

He left the courtroom Wednesday, walking ahead of two friends with his head hung low.

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