A New York court on Tuesday sentenced Takeshi Ebisawa, 61, to 20 years in prison after convicting him of conspiring to traffic nuclear material, along with drugs and weapons. Ebisawa, whom U.S. prosecutors say is a leader in Japan’s Yakuza organized crime network, has been jailed since his April 2022 arrest in Manhattan during a Drug Enforcement Administration sting. His Thai co-defendant, Somphop Singhasiri, was also arrested during the probe.
Prosecutors say that in 2021–2022 Ebisawa communicated with a DEA confidential source and the source’s associate, who posed as an Iranian general. Unaware they were undercover, Ebisawa offered to sell military-grade nuclear material, initially citing uranium and later proposing “plutonium” he described as more “powerful” than uranium, according to court filings. He was accused in February 2024 of trying to sell nuclear material, as well as narcotics including heroin and methamphetamine, to raise funds to buy weapons — including surface-to-air missiles — for armed groups in Myanmar.
Court documents state Ebisawa claimed the nuclear material came from an unidentified leader of an “ethnic insurgent group” in Myanmar mining uranium. To support that claim, he sent photographs showing rocky substances measured with Geiger counters and claimed they contained thorium and uranium. Samples obtained by investigators were analyzed at a U.S. federal laboratory and were reported to contain uranium, thorium and plutonium; prosecutors said the isotope composition of the plutonium was weapons-grade.
In addition to the nuclear-material charges, prosecutors allege Ebisawa conspired to sell 500 kilograms each of methamphetamine and heroin to an undercover agent for distribution in New York and attempted to launder $100,000 in purported narcotics proceeds from the U.S. to Japan. He pleaded guilty to six charges in January 2025.
“The defendant has been held accountable for his crimes, including an attempt to sell weapons-grade plutonium to Iran and to flood New York with deadly narcotics,” said John Eisenberg, the assistant attorney general for national security. The Justice Department previously released photographs of the purported nuclear materials as part of its 2024 announcement of the charges. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
