A Mundelein woman has been sentenced to two years in prison after federal prosecutors say she illegally exported night-vision goggles and thermal riflescopes, among other defense items, to Russia.
Elena Shifrin, 62, of Mundelein, and Vladimir Pridacha, 59, of Volo, were both arrested in June 2021 after a federal grand jury charged them with conspiring to unlawfully export defense articles to Russia.
The charges against Pridacha have since been dismissed at the request of prosecutors in January.
Shifrin pleaded guilty in February 2022 to one count of conspiracy to violate the Arms Export Control Act.
She was sentenced by United States District Judge André Birotte Jr. to 24 months in prison earlier this week.
According to court documents, Shifrin participated in the export of more than 60 defense articles from the United States to Russia from 2017 to 2020 without obtaining from the State Department a valid license or other approval for the exports.
Shifrin admitted at her change of plea hearing that her co-conspirators purchased the defense articles – including thermal riflescopes, weapons sights, monoculars and night-vision goggles – from online sellers in the United States and directed the sellers to mail those items to Shifrin and other co-conspirators in Illinois and California.
Prosecutors said Shifrin mailed them to co-conspirators in Russia without obtaining the required licenses after receiving the items.
To conceal her activity, Shifrin exported the defense articles to Russia while listing fictitious sender names and addresses on the packages containing the defense articles, falsely identified the items in the packages as non-export-controlled items such as clothing, and concealed the defense articles in other items such as toolkits and kitchen appliances.
One of Shifrin’s co-conspirators, Igor Panchernikov, 43, a former Corona, California, resident who once served in the United States Air Force Reserves, pleaded guilty in March 2023 to one count of conspiracy to violate the Arms Export Control Act.
He was sentenced in June 2023 to 27 months in federal prison.
Two other defendants charged in the case – Boris Polosin, of Russia, and Vladimir Gohman, of Israel – are fugitives, prosecutors said.
The FBI’s Los Angeles and Chicago field offices investigated this matter, with substantial assistance from the United States Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations.