The United States Department of Justice announced that a court in the country has tried and sentenced two men from the state of Texas to 45 months in prison on Tuesday, June 11, for attempting to sell Iranian oil and violating U.S. sanctions.
According to the department, 43-year-old Chinese citizen Zhenyu Wang and 42-year-old Daniel Ray Lane from McKinney, Texas, tried to sell Iranian oil from July 2019 to February 2020, evading U.S. sanctions against Iran.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s announcement states that the two defendants concealed the origin of the oil and sold it to a refinery in China.
Daniel Ray Lane is the director of the Texas-based private company Stack Royalties, which is an intermediary investment company for private equity groups and investment funds in the oil and gas sector.
Previously, a U.S. court jury found Genevieve Wang and Daniel Ray Lane guilty in November. At the time, Paul Hetzenker, Lane’s attorney, stated that the case was based on the claims of a U.S. government undercover agent who had offered Lane the prospect of “millions of dollars in profits” if he participated in the scheme.
These two, along with three others, were accused in 2020 in a U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania of evading U.S. sanctions against Iran’s regime. Court documents show that they had pleaded guilty at the time.
After the U.S. imposed sanction on Iranian oil exports in 2018, China became the only major importer of Iranian oil.
