This blog has closely followed the case involving Alexander Fishenko and his company ARC Electronics, mostly because the government larded the export charges against Fishenko with bogus “spying” charges premised on an alleged charge that he failed to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act.  Those charges were bogus because the act makes clear that selling goods to a foreign government is not an activity that requires registration.

A number of the employees of ARC were also indicted on export charges in connection with the exports to Russia without the required BIS licenses. One of them, Anastasia Diatlova, the most junior sales clerk in the organization, is now apparently facing harsher sentencing than other sales clerks at ARC because she ticked off the government by making them go to trial, or at least that’s the claim made in the Sentencing Memorandum filed by Ms. Diatlova’s attorneys. That memo argues that she should get the same sentence of time served as the other sales clerks in the organization. (Fishenko, who owned Arc and ran the operation, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to ten years.)

Apparently time served was offered in the plea deal but Diatlova went to trial anyway.  That decision was premised on the reasonable belief that someone who had only an eighth grade education, received little if any compliance training, and had previously refused to sell parts where she knew them to be restricted was unlikely to have known that the one export with which she was involved and charged was illegal.

But, juries being juries, and with the prosecutors no doubt screaming “spy” and “Russia” at every available opportunity, the jury convicted her anyway. And now the government wants revenge and has taken the offer of a sentence of time served off the table. That is, of course, their right, but it seems petty and almost despicable in the case of a $15/hour sales clerk who sold an item that probably would have been licensed if one had been requested. One has to wonder why the government was chasing her anyway other than as potential low-hanging fruit that could result in another notch on their holsters.

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