A UF nuclear engineering professor and his wife have been indicted by a federal grand jury and arrested on charges related to $3.7 million in fraudulent grant proposals submitted to NASA, the U.S. Air Force and the Navy.
They were arrested Friday morning in Gainesville, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office.
In the 71-count indictment, Samim Anghaie, 60, and his wife, Sousan, 55, are accused of defrauding the government in a number of ways, including creating fake employees and using the research papers, theses and presentations of UF graduate and doctoral students without their knowledge or consent.
The couple also falsely claimed to have a state-of-the-art analysis and data communication laboratory, and that their company, New Era Technology, or NETECH, had a partnership with UF's Innovation Nuclear Space Power and Propulsion Institute.
Some of the work that was supposed to have been done by NETECH was actually work done at UF and a lab in Russia, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.
The couple is accused of using hundreds of thousands of dollars of the illegally obtained money to buy land and cars.
According to the indictment, they also gave some of the money to their sons.
The charges against them are: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 50 counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, 17 counts of money laundering and one count of making false statements to the government, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
In a separate count, Sousan Anghaie is charged with making false statements.
If convicted, they face up to 20 years in prison on each of the conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering charges, and up to five years for each of the charges of making false statements, according to the office.
The Anghaies and their Gainesville-based company were the target of a federal investigation that included the search of Samim Anghaie's UF office by the FBI in February.
On Thursday, the court ordered the forfeiture of six properties, as well as several bank accounts and vehicles, on the basis that they were purchased with money earned from the fraudulent grants.
UF placed Samim Anghaie on leave immediately after learning of the investigation in February, cutting off his access to funding, awards and university resources, according to a statement released by the university on Friday.
