A New York federal judge on Tuesday sentenced Takeshi Ebisawa, 61, to 20 years in prison after convicting him of conspiring to traffic nuclear material, narcotics and weapons. U.S. prosecutors say Ebisawa is a senior figure in Japan’s Yakuza organized crime network; he 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 as part of the investigation.
Prosecutors say that in 2021–2022 Ebisawa communicated with a DEA confidential source and the source’s associate, who was posing as an Iranian general. Believing they were dealing with buyers, Ebisawa offered to sell military-grade nuclear material—initially referring to uranium and later describing “plutonium” as more “powerful” than uranium, according to court filings. He was indicted in February 2024 on charges alleging he tried to sell nuclear material and to traffic large quantities of narcotics, including heroin and methamphetamine, to finance purchases of weapons—among them surface-to-air missiles—for armed groups in Myanmar.
Court documents indicate Ebisawa claimed the nuclear material came from an unnamed leader of an “ethnic insurgent group” in Myanmar that was mining uranium. To bolster that claim, he provided photographs of rocky samples and Geiger-counter readings and said the samples contained thorium and uranium. Investigators submitted samples to a U.S. federal laboratory; prosecutors say the lab found uranium, thorium and plutonium, and that the plutonium had an isotope composition consistent with weapons-grade material.
In addition to the nuclear allegations, prosecutors contend Ebisawa conspired to sell 500 kilograms each of methamphetamine and heroin for distribution in New York and attempted to launder $100,000 in supposed drug proceeds 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, assistant attorney general for national security. The Justice Department released photographs of the alleged nuclear materials when it announced the charges in 2024. The Associated Press contributed to this report.