Well this is more than a little alarming:
Federal prosecutors in New York on Wednesday said they charged a Japanese Yakuza leader with conspiring to traffic nuclear materials from Burma to other countries in the belief that they would be used by Iran to make a nuclear weapon.
The accused gangster, Takeshi Ebisawa, 'and his confederates showed samples of nuclear materials in Thailand' to an undercover agent from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration who was posing as a narcotics and weapons trafficker with access to an Iranian general, prosecutors said.
These were not just scrub pieces of nuclear scrap, either. A U.S. nuclear forensic laboratory "analyzed the samples and confirmed that the samples contain uranium and weapons-grade plutonium."
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, meanwhile, said in a statement that it was "impossible to overstate the seriousness" of the charges against Ebisawa, who allegedly attempted to sell the nuke material "​​while believing it would be used to develop a nuclear weapons program."
Ebisawa apparently wanted a small army's worth of weapons and other fun toys in exchange:
This is not Ebisawa's first rodeo. He has previously been charged with "international narcotics trafficking and firearms offenses." It's a familiar beat to the guy. His "international criminal network extends through Asia, Europe, and the United States, among other places," the indictment says.
The accused criminal now faces a titanic list of allegations, including:
Conspiracy to commit international trafficking of nuclear materials; trafficking of nuclear materials; narcotics importation conspiracy; conspiracy to acquire, transfer and possess surface-to-air missiles; conspiracy to possess firearms, including machine guns and destructive devices; and money laundering.
Ebisawa faces a maximum life sentence in prison.
Here's a few pages from the US government's release:
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