A man who federal prosecutors say runs a notorious Japanese organized crime syndicate pleaded guilty last week to conspiring to traffic nuclear materials to Iran and U.S. weapons abandoned in Afghanistan to Burma. 

Takeshi Ebisawa, the 60-year-old alleged leader of the Japanese yakuza, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday to conspiring with a network of associates to traffic nuclear materials, including uranium and weapons-grade plutonium, from Burma to other countries. He also pleaded guilty to international narcotics trafficking and weapons charges, the Justice Department announced. 

Acting U.S. Attorney Edward Y. Kim for the Southern District of New York said Ebisawa admitted that he “brazenly trafficked nuclear material, including weapons-grade plutonium, out of Burma,” while at the same time, he worked to “send massive quantities of heroin and methamphetamine to the United States in exchange for heavy-duty weaponry such as surface-to-air missiles to be used on battlefields in Burma and laundered what he believed to be drug money from New York to Tokyo.” 

Takeshi Ebisawa has pleaded guilty to an international crime operation.  (Southern District of New York )

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had been investigating Ebisawa since at least 2019, according to court documents and evidence presented in court. 

During the course of the probe, federal prosecutors say Ebisawa unwittingly introduced an undercover DEA agent who was posing as a narcotics and weapons trafficker to his international network of criminal associates, which spanned Japan, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, and the United States, among other places, “for the purpose of arranging large-scale narcotics and weapons transactions.” 

He allegedly claimed he could produce as much as five tons of nuclear materials in Burma. They had several meetings in Southeast Asia to discuss their ongoing transactions, prosecutors say. 

During one of these meetings, one of Ebisawa’s co-conspirators showed the undercover agent in a Thailand hotel room two plastic containers each holding a powdery yellow substance which he described as nuclear samples of “yellowcake.” 

He allegedly said one container held a sample of uranium in the compound U3O8, and the other container held Thorium-232.

The samples were seized with the assistance of Thai authorities and subsequently transferred to the custody of U.S. law enforcement. 

The DOJ said a nuclear forensic laboratory in the U.S. examined the samples and determined that both samples contained detectable quantities of uranium, thorium, and plutonium. “In particular, the laboratory determined that the isotope composition of the plutonium found in the nuclear samples is weapons-grade, meaning that the plutonium, if produced in sufficient quantities, would be suitable for use in a nuclear weapon,” prosecutors added. 

The superseding indictment included photos of the nuclear samples seized. (Southern District of New York)

Ebisawa had been jailed in Brooklyn since his April 2022 arrest during a DEA sting operation that resulted in international drug and weapons charges. A superseding indictment was brought against him last February. 

On Wednesday, Ebisawa pleaded guilty to six counts. The two counts of narcotics importation conspiracy carry a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum of life in prison. The other charges he admitted to are conspiracy to commit international trafficking of nuclear materials, international trafficking of nuclear materials, conspiracy to possess firearms, including machine guns and destructive devices, and money laundering. 

Ebisawa’s guilty plea “should serve as a stark reminder to those who imperil our national security by trafficking weapons-grade plutonium and other dangerous materials on behalf of organized criminal syndicates that the Department of Justice will hold you accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said in a statement.

DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said the investigation into Ebisawa and his associates “exposed the shocking depths of international organized crime from trafficking nuclear materials to fueling the narcotics trade and arming violent insurgents.”