Iranian Engineer Guilty of Taking Software From Palo Verde Nuclear Plant

May 28, 2008

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An engineer from Iran was convicted Tuesday of illegally accessing a protected computer in the United States to use training software he obtained at a former job at a nuclear power plant in Arizona.

The jury deadlocked on two other counts against Mohammad Reza Alavi: stealing protected software and illegally exporting the software in violation of the U.S. trade embargo with Iran. A retrial was set for Aug. 1.

Defense attorney David Laufman said he plans to file a motion asking U.S. District Judge Neil Wake to overturn the guilty verdict.

“The government failed to meet its burden of proof on the main charges in this case,” Laufman said.

Alavi, 50, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Iran, ran afoul of the law in 2006, prosecutors said. That’s when he quit his job at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station west of Phoenix and brought a laptop to Iran containing training software with design schematics and other details of the plant.

Officials at Palo Verde, the nation’s largest nuclear plant, have said the information Alavi obtained did not pose a security threat.

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