Rug seller in big trouble

From the Times Ledger:

A Rosedale rug dealer who violated the trade embargo with Iran was ordered to be held in prison and pay the federal government hundreds of thousands of dollars for his illegal sales, the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan said.

Reza Safarha, 55, an Iranian immigrant, was sentenced Friday to more than eight years in prison after he was convicted of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, conspiracy to launder money and stealing government money, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

A federal judge convicted Safarha, who owned the KP House of Carpets, at 134-35 Brookville Blvd., in February for sending nearly $300,000 in cash to Iran in violation of the trade embargo with the nation that has been in effect since 1995.

The immigrant used an informal money-transferring system known as a “hawala,” where funds never physically cross boundaries through a banking system, the U.S. attorney’s office said. The funds are transferred from one country by a hawala operator and distributed to recipients in another nation by the operator’s associates.