The U.S. Justice Department joined authorities in Canada and Germany in dismantling the online infrastructure behind four highly disruptive botnets that compromised more than three million Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as routers and web cameras. The feds say the four botnets — named Aisuru, Kimwolf, JackSkid and Mossad — are responsible for a series of recent record-smashing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks capable of knocking nearly any target offline.
Image: Shutterstock, @Elzicon.
The Justice Department said the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General’s (DoDIG) Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) executed seizure warrants targeting multiple U.S.-registered domains, virtual servers, and other infrastructure involved in DDoS attacks against Internet addresses owned by the DoD.
The government alleges the unnamed people in control of the four botnets used their crime machines to launch hundreds of thousands of DDoS attacks, often demanding extortion payments from victims. Some victims reported tens of thousands of dollars in losses and remediation expenses.
The oldest of the botnets — Aisuru — issued more than 200,000 attacks commands, while JackSkid hurled at least 90,000 attacks. Kimwolf issued more than 25,000 attack commands, the government said, while Mossad was blamed for roughy 1,000 digital sieges.
The DOJ said the law enforcement action was designed to prevent further infection to victim devices and to limit or eliminate the ability of the botnets to launch future attacks. The case is being investigated by the DCIS with help from the FBI’s field office in Anchorage, Alaska, and the DOJ’s statement credits nearly two dozen technology companies with assisting in the operation.
“By working closely with DCIS and our international law enforcement partners, we collectively identified and disrupted criminal infrastructure used to carry out large-scale DDoS attacks,” said Special Agent in Charge Rebecca Day of the FBI Anchorage Field Office.
Aisuru emerged in late 2024, and by mid-2025 it was launching record-breaking DDoS attacks as it rapidly infected new IoT devices. In October 2025, Aisuru was used to seed Kimwolf, an Aisuru variant which introduced a novel spreading mechanism that allowed the botnet to infect devices hidden behind the protection of the user’s internal network.
On January 2, 2026, the security firm Synthientpublicly disclosed the vulnerability Kimwolf was using to propagate so quickly. That disclosure helped curtail Kimwolf’s spread somewhat, but since then several other IoT botnets have emerged that effectively copy Kimwolf’s spreading methods while competing for the same pool of vulnerable devices. According to the DOJ, the JackSkid botnet also sought out systems on internal networks just like Kimwolf.
The DOJ said its disruption of the four botnets coincided with “law enforcement actions” conducted in Canada and Germany targeting individuals who allegedly operated those botnets, although no further details were available on the suspected operators.
In late February, KrebsOnSecurity identified a 22-year-old Canadian man as a core operator of the Kimwolf botnet. Multiple sources familiar with the investigation told KrebsOnSecurity the other prime suspect is a 15-year-old living in Germany.
Polish authorities on Thursday detained five court officials in a widening investigation into a multimillion-dollar embezzlement scheme at the Kraków Court of Appeal, marking a new chapter in one of the largest judicial corruption scandals in the country’s history.
The arrests signal that the sprawling graft network, which has already led to dozens of indictments, continues to be an active target for law enforcement.
According to Poland’s Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA), the latest suspects include a deputy director, the head of the court’s IT department, a chief procurement specialist, an acting deputy chief accountant, and an IT specialist. Prosecutors accuse them of operating as an organized criminal group within the judicial system.
The investigation centers on allegations of bribery, fraud, and money laundering used to siphon off public funds. The total losses linked to the broader Kraków court scandal are estimated at nearly 35 million zloty, or about $9 million.
According to the anti-corruption bureau, the fraud relied on a network of fictitious consulting and IT contracts. Companies bound to court insiders by family, social, and financial ties were awarded regular contracts to produce analyses, studies, and IT services that were never actually performed.
To create the illusion of legitimate services and establish a paper trail, the supposed tasks were allegedly reassigned to existing court employees. Once the state paid the outside contractors, portions of the funds were secretly funneled back to court officials as illegal kickbacks.
Thursday’s detentions are not an isolated crackdown. The CBA noted that this specific investigative strand has already yielded a steady drumbeat of arrests in December, February, and March.
The enforcement actions run parallel to a massive, ongoing legal reckoning. In April 2025, a landmark trial opened in the city of Rzeszów involving 43 defendants. Prosecutors in that case outlined a vast criminal organization, allegedly led by the court’s former director, that embezzled state funds through bogus contracts and shell companies between 2001 and 2016.
In total, 57 people were initially indicted across several related dockets. The latest wave of arrests underscores that the scandal involves a deeply entrenched, multi-layered network rather than a single, contained conspiracy.
Russian Telegram channels dedicated to broadcasting graphic war footage from Ukraine—including apparent executions and the mutilation of corpses—have morphed into a highly profitable online industry operated in part by civilians and teenagers, according to a new investigation.
The independent Russian news outlet IStories analyzed more than 50 channels focused on war snuff. The investigation revealed that administrators draw tens of thousands of followers, monetizing extreme battlefield violence through advertising, cross-promotion, direct donations, and paid access to uncensored material.
Rather than frontline soldiers sharing the realities of combat, the networks are predominantly managed by opportunists hundreds of miles away from the trenches, turning atrocities into a lucrative digital enterprise.
The Factory Worker’s Side Hustle
One prominent example highlighted by the investigation was “Video *** 18+,” a Telegram channel that amassed nearly 40,000 subscribers.
IStories identified the channel’s founder as Vladimir Grebennikov, a 36-year-old refractory worker at an aluminum plant in Volgograd. Based on the channel’s posting volume, audience reach, and current market rates, the outlet estimated the operation could generate roughly 200,000 rubles a month in advertising revenue—a significant income in provincial Russia.
By early 2026, Grebennikov had reportedly sold the channel, citing burnout from managing the relentless stream of gore.
A Teenage Enterprise
Grebennikov’s operation, however, was far from isolated. The investigation exposed a disturbing demographic trend among the administrators: a significant number of them are minors.
One major snuff channel, boasting nearly 110,000 subscribers, explicitly listed teenagers as its advertising contacts. IStories identified Denis Bogolyubov, now 19, who was handling ad sales for the channel in 2023 when he was just 16. Another teenager, Artem Prigodin from the Arkhangelsk region, was also linked to selling ads for graphic “18+” channels while still underage.
Elsewhere, the outlet identified 18-year-old Artem Filippov from Kaluga as the founder of a separate graphic channel, which he appears to have launched when he was about 15.
Investigators located at least four other administrators who are currently no older than 15. One of them, a 14-year-old schoolboy from Abakan, heavily utilized Russian military imagery on his accounts and had reportedly applied to join Yunarmiya, the Kremlin-backed patriotic youth movement.
Crowdfunding Atrocities
The monetization tactics extend beyond traditional advertising. The investigation found that some channels openly solicit funds from their audiences to pay for exclusive violent content.
In one chilling instance, an administrator sought donations to purchase footage showing a wounded Ukrainian soldier being executed. The administrator later publicly thanked a subscriber for financially supporting the Russian fighter who provided the video.
While these channels exist primarily to traffic in gore and generate profit, human rights advocates and international investigators note they are inadvertently serving a second purpose: the vast trove of graphic material they circulate may ultimately serve as critical documentary evidence in future war crimes prosecutions.
I was born and raised in Kansas. This is not something that I bring up often, because it’s a bit of a bummer. When I do tell people this, it usually elicits a reaction along the lines of “oh, I’m sorry”; a blank stare in disbelief that people do, in fact, live in Kansas; or a story about how they have some random second cousin that moved there and that, no, they are not planning to go visit.
On the afternoon of Sept. 9, 2024, Cherise Doyley was in her 12th hour of contractions at the University of Florida Health hospital in downtown Jacksonville when a nurse came in with a bedsheet and told her to cover up. A supervisor brought a tablet to Doyley’s bedside. Gathered on the screen in a video conference were a judge in a black robe and several lawyers, doctors and hospital staff.
“It’s a real judge in there?” Doyley asked the nurse at the beginning of what would be a three-hour hearing. “Now this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Doyley hadn’t asked for the hearing. The hospital had sought it. Doyley had mere minutes to prepare. She had no lawyer and no advocate — no one to explain to her what exactly was going on.
Judge Michael Kalil informed her that the state had filed an emergency petition at the hospital’s behest — not out of concern for Doyley, per se, but in the interest of her unborn child. He described the circumstances as “extraordinary.”
The hospital and state attorney’s office wanted to force Doyley to undergo a cesarean section. Doyley, a professional birthing doula, didn’t want that and had been firm about it. She’d had three prior C-sections, one that resulted in a hemorrhage, and hoped to avoid another serious complication and lengthy recovery. She was aware that doctors were concerned about the risk of uterine rupture, a potentially deadly complication for her and her baby. She would say during the hearing that she understood the risk to be less than 2% and didn’t want to agree to a C-section unless there was an emergency.
But the choice would not be hers. The judge would decide how she would give birth.
Mentally competent patients typically have the right to choose their medical care — or refuse it. But there is one notable exception: pregnant patients. That inconsistency is particularly striking in Florida, a state that has pushed to expand medical freedom for those who wish to avoid vaccines or fluoridated water, while constricting the rights of people in various stages of pregnancy.
“There aren’t any other instances where you would invade the body of one person in order to save the life of another,” said Lois Shepherd, a bioethics expert at the University of Virginia School of Law.
In Florida and many other states, court-ordered medical procedures are just one of the ways pregnant patients’ rights are restricted. The effort to chip away at those rights is rooted in the concept of fetal personhood — that a fetus has equal and, in some cases, more rights than the woman sustaining it.
The hospital and state attorney’s office wanted to force Doyley to undergo a cesarean section.
The link between fetal personhood and court-ordered C-sections dates back to the 1980s, when courts started ruling that hospitals can override patients’ decisions in favor of the health of unborn children.
In the years since, proponents of fetal personhood began to push for even broader legal protections. In 1986, Minnesota was the first state to recognize fetuses as victims in homicide cases. Some states have imprisoned pregnant women for exposing their fetuses to drugs. Nearly 30 states have passed laws that allow hospitals to invalidate pregnant patients’ advance directives, which outline the kinds of life-sustaining treatment a person wants after a catastrophic illness or accident. At least one, Alabama, extended the concept of personhood all the way to the earliest stages of fertilization and conception by giving frozen embryos the same legal status as children, though the Legislature later said the law couldn’t be enforced.
And the fetal personhood movement has accelerated in the past several years, supercharged by the U.S. Supreme Court decision to reverse the abortion rights that had been protected by Roe v. Wade.
Florida has long been at the forefront of fetal personhood policies. The state was one of the first in the country to prosecute a woman for “delivering” drugs to her fetus during pregnancy in 1989, although the Florida Supreme Court later overturned her conviction. And after advocates twice failed to get a fetal personhood amendment on the state ballot, the Legislature is now considering a bill that would enshrine the concept in state law by giving embryos and fetuses the same legal status as people in wrongful death suits.
For women in labor, the potential impact of the bill is clear: Experts anticipate their medical needs could be further diminished in favor of their fetuses’.
Several legal experts told ProPublica they are alarmed by Doyley’s case and the legislation’s potential to allow for more court interventions during childbirth. Lawyers who represent women in fetal personhood cases already have identified a higher number of forced C-sections in Florida than other states.
The state attorney’s office for the 4th Judicial Circuit declined to comment on Doyley’s case, saying a response would violate her medical privacy. But in an email, a spokesperson noted why, in general, the office would intervene: “The courts have held that the State has a compelling interest in the preservation of the life of an unborn child and the protection of innocent third parties who may be harmed by the parental refusal to allow or consent to life-saving medical treatment.”
C-sections account for nearly a third of all deliveries in the United States. They can be necessary when babies are in breech position, the wrong orientation for birth, as well as in cases of maternal or fetal emergency. But in other cases, such as slow laboring or prior C-sections, the need for the surgery is less clear.
Surveys have found that more than 10% of women feel pressured into C-sections and other procedures by doctors worried about injuries to the baby. Patients generally don’t challenge doctors who say they’re necessary, and it is uncommon for someone to hold out and for a hospital to turn to the courts.
Florida has long been at the forefront of fetal personhood policies.
It is so rare, in fact, that advocates for the rights of pregnant women were shocked to discover that the same thing that happened to Doyley had happened to another Florida woman just a year and a half earlier.
The similarities in their cases were striking. Both women had had three prior C-sections. They had questioned the need for their previous surgeries and arrived prepared to fight for vaginal births. And both women were Black.
They had argued that compelling them to have C-sections violated their rights to make medical decisions. Hospital staff said the women’s medical decisions threatened the health of their fetuses. It would be up to the courts to decide which one mattered more.
Asked to consider the constitutionality of court-ordered C-sections, the U.S. Supreme Court declined in 1994, leaving a patchwork of decisions that vary by state.
In the early 1980s, a hospital in Georgia won a court order to force a woman with a dangerous pregnancy complication to have a C-section. Then, in 1987, a judge in Washington, D.C., approved a request to perform surgery on a pregnant woman dying from cancer without her consent. Later, a higher court reversed that ruling and held that hospitals should not override medical decisions. An Illinois appellate court in 1993 refused to order a woman to undergo a C-section.
Not long after, a patient named Laura Pemberton, who did not want a C-section, left a hospital in Tallahassee, Florida, against medical advice. A local judge sent law enforcement to her house to bring her back. Once she returned to the hospital, the judge ordered her to have a C-section, which doctors carried out. She later sued in federal court and lost. The 1999 decision by a federal district judge found that the state had a right to override her wishes.
“Whatever the scope of Ms. Pemberton’s personal Constitutional rights in this situation, they clearly did not outweigh the interests of the State of Florida in preserving the life of the unborn child,” the decision said. The decision marked a legal turning point in prioritizing fetal rights over the religious freedom and bodily autonomy of the mother.
In 2009, Samantha Burton arrived at the same hospital after going into premature labor at 25 weeks, in her second trimester of pregnancy. Doctors told her she needed to remain on bed rest, but she wanted to leave and go home to her children. The hospital got a court order for her to remain in the hospital and undergo any treatment doctors deemed necessary to save the fetus. She had an emergency C-section, and the baby was stillborn.
She appealed the ruling granting the emergency order, and a Florida appeals court ruled in her favor. It said the Circuit Court judge should have required the hospital to prove the baby was viable before imposing unwanted treatment, but the court stopped short of saying it was unacceptable to override the medical decisions of pregnant women in all situations.
Pregnancy is the only condition where Florida courts have ruled that a patient can be forced to undergo unwanted treatment. Even a state prisoner on a hunger strike has more rights to make medical decisions.
Those rulings give the state vast control over pregnant women.
“All of it essentially is about the state’s ability to decide that a fetus, at any point during a pregnancy, is more important than the person who’s pregnant,” said Rutgers University law professor Kimberly Mutcherson.
In March 2023, more than a year before Doyley’s court-ordered C-section, Brianna Bennett arrived in labor at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital — the same hospital where the women in the 1999 and 2009 lawsuits had given birth.
Those rulings give the state vast control over pregnant women.
Over the preceding years, Bennett had come to question the medical reasoning behind her three prior C-sections. Each recovery had been harder than the last, leaving her so incapacitated after the third that for two weeks she couldn’t even go to the bathroom without help.
By Bennett’s fourth pregnancy, her mother’s hip problems had gotten so bad that she needed a wheelchair and required some help from Bennett to function. When she went into labor, Bennett did not think she could care for all her family members while in recovery from abdominal surgery, so she insisted on trying for a vaginal birth.
Tallahassee Memorial Hospital had specialists on staff and a neonatal intensive care unit equipped to serve critically ill babies. Bennett believed it offered the kind of support she needed to be able to follow her birth plan. The hospital has handled a lot of high-risk pregnancies.
As Bennett’s labor stretched past 24 hours, a doctor confronted her about agreeing to a C-section, Bennett said. She continued to refuse, so the hospital reached out to the state attorney. In an email, Jack Campbell, state attorney for the 2nd Judicial Circuit, responded that the court needed to act quickly.
“I plan to file an emergency motion with the Court to allow TMH to take whatever steps medically necessary to protect the life of the child and mother,” he wrote.
During the hearing, 15 to 20 people squeezed into Bennett’s hospital room. As would later happen with Doyley, she found herself in front of a tablet with a judge on the screen.
Bennett said she found it offensive that so many people were concerned about the method of her delivery without taking into consideration how difficult it would be to take care of both herself and her baby while recovering from a C-section. “Are any of you gonna help me bathe or shower? Are you gonna help change my pad? Are you gonna help lift the baby out of the bed and put me in the bed because I can’t lift my legs? Is anyone going to help me?”
Campbell told ProPublica that he felt the hearing was necessary to save two lives, Bennett’s and her baby’s. “I’m real comfortable with what we did here,” Campbell said. “I hate the fact that she’s upset about it.”
A spokesperson for Tallahassee Memorial Hospital declined to comment on Bennett’s case, even though she signed a waiver allowing the hospital to do so. “We will not be able to discuss specific patients or cases,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. The hospital did not respond to questions about its history of seeking court intervention in multiple women’s medical decisions while giving birth.
Bennett said she tried to remain calm, but inside she was panicking. During the hearing, her baby’s heart rate spiked. The judge ordered her to have a C-section, and doctors wheeled her into surgery. The operation lasted 2½ hours and the surgical team had to cut around existing scar tissue and avoid her bladder. Her incision looked like an upside-down T and required a wound vacuum, a portable machine that helps incisions close more quickly.
She said a doctor who visited her room during recovery told her she should never get pregnant again, according to a civil rights complaint filed with federal regulators.The complaint is still under investigation, but lawyers for Bennett said they haven’t heard from investigators in more than a year. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not comment on the complaint.
Bennett said she tried to remain calm, but inside she was panicking.
“I cried every single day,” Bennett said. “I felt like I was supposed to be happy. I’m supposed to be thankful that I have a new life and that the Lord has blessed me to see this new baby. And I’m not even happy.”
A year and a half later in Jacksonville, Doyley faced a situation eerily similar to Bennett’s.
She noted as her hearing began that she was the only Black person on the screen. About a dozen faces, most of them white, had gathered to challenge her medical decisions. She said it made her feel as if her race had something to do with the fact that she was thrust into the intrusive hearing.
“I have 20 white people against me, and because I am informed and I am making an informed decision, they are trying to take my rights away from me by force,” Doyley told the people on the screen, requesting a Black nurse or doctor.
“I don’t find that race really has much to do with this, ma’am,” the judge responded.
Dr. Erin Burnett said during the hearing that she did not think Doyley could successfully give birth vaginally because she had a history of stalled labors. A long labor after prior C-sections could increase the risk of uterine rupture, which could kill Doyley and the child, she said.
She said the baby’s heart rate showed some signs of distress and told Doyley it would be better to have a C-section before it became an emergency. If the baby’s heart stopped or if she lost oxygen during delivery, the baby could suffer a brain injury or death.
Dr. John Davis, the chair of the obstetrics and gynecology department, testified that the hospital had been recognized for its low C-section rate and did not perform unnecessary surgeries. Doyley’s condition required intervention, he said.
Burnett and Davis did not respond to requests for comment and the hospital declined ProPublica’s requests to interview them and others involved in Doyley’s care. Doyley signed a waiver allowing the hospital to discuss her case with ProPublica, but a spokesperson for University of Florida Health in Jacksonville would not comment, citing patient privacy. Nor did the hospital respond to questions about Doyley’s claim that race played a role in the decision to involve the court.
The research on the risks of uterine rupture after prior C-sections is unclear. Studies have found that 0.15% to 2.3% of these labors resulted in a rupture, depending on a number of factors such as body mass, a history of successful vaginal births and whether the labor was spontaneous or had to be induced.
Doyley, who felt comfortable with her odds and wanted to continue laboring, argued during the hearing that C-sections carry their own dangers — including a risk of death.
“A lot of that comes from medical negligence and medical racism, where we have a group of white doctors that think that they know what is best for Black bodies and Black babies,” Doyley said in the hearing.
Both the doctors and Doyley mentioned recommendations from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. However, neither one cited the organization’s stance on court-ordered C-sections, which the group has deemed to be “ethically impermissible.”
“A lot of that comes from medical negligence and medical racism.”
After three hours of testimony — all while Doyley lay in her hospital bed — the judge ruled that she could keep laboring unless there was an emergency. If that happened, the hospital could operate, whether she wanted it or not. The judge would reconvene the hearing in the morning.
In response to questions from ProPublica, Kalil wrote in an email that the judicial code of conduct prohibits judges from commenting on cases. “These ethical standards exist to protect the integrity of the judicial process, ensure fairness to all parties, and preserve the Court’s neutrality,” he wrote.
Overnight, doctors said the baby’s heart rate dropped for seven minutes. Doyley awoke to find herself being wheeled in her hospital bed into surgery. She called out to her sister who was asleep in the hospital room.
“I had to tell her, ‘Hey, wake up,’” Doyley said. “‘Something is going on.’ She’s trying to put on her shoes. I’m like, ‘Girl, leave the shoes. Let’s go.’”
Doyley recalled reciting a short prayer as her sister scrambled into the operating room. The baby was delivered by C-section. Although Doyley’s daughter was initially limp, she perked up and became responsive within a few minutes. Doctors took her to the NICU while Doyley went to recovery. And to get ready to face the judge again.
At the 8 a.m. hearing, Doyley looked pained and groggy. She told the judge she still hadn’t been allowed to see her daughter and asked if he could help. A doctor testified that the baby had been brought to the NICU in respiratory distress and placed on a machine to help with her breathing.
Kalil said he couldn’t order the hospital to do anything. The matter he had been appointed to hear involved only her unborn baby. He had no authority over the child in the nursery.
Kalil wished her well and quickly closed the case.
A sanctioned Iranian oil magnate and his brother have used aliases and Caribbean “golden passports” to amass a $29 million luxury real estate portfolio in Dubai, property records show.
Hossein Shamkhani and his brother, Abolfazl, are the sons of Ali Shamkhani, a political adviser to Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Their father was killed during recent U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that claimed the lives of Khamenei and other top officials, according to ILNA, a semi-official Iranian news agency.
Hossein Shamkhani was hit with U.S. and EU sanctions in July 2025 for allegedly generating billions of dollars in oil revenue for the regimes in Tehran and Moscow. He was identified by the U.S. Treasury as a citizen of Dominica, under the name “Hugo Hayek.”
OCCRP has now found that his younger brother Abolfazl — who has not been sanctioned — has also obtained a Dominica passport under the name “Sami Hayek.”
United Arab Emirates property records obtained by OCCRP show that the brothers are the listed owners of no fewer than four luxury Dubai villas. At the time of acquisition, these properties were worth nearly $29 million. They hold the properties under their Caribbean identities.
Neither Hossein Shamkhani nor his brother Abolfazl responded to requests for comment.
A man who answered a call to a phone number listed in Dubai property records for Sami Hayek said it was a “wrong number.” When told that the number appeared in the records, the man said: “I don’t care, okay. Thank you, bye.”
Calls to a phone number listed for “Hugo Hayek” in Dubai property records went unanswered.
Civil Forfeiture
The U.S. Treasury Department’s July 2025 sanctions notice claimed that Shamkhani leveraged “corruption through his father’s political influence… to build and operate a massive fleet of tankers and containerships.”
According to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) the Shamkhani family funeled this “ill-gotten wealth” into “exclusive properties around the world and obtaining foreign passports in exchange for substantial financial investments.”
“These passports allow them to travel undetected and hide their connections to Iran when conducting business overseas in furtherance of their corrupt schemes,” OFAC added in a statement.
Following U.S. and EU sanctions, the U.K. sanctioned Hossein in August 2025 for allegedly supporting the Iranian regime’s “hostile activity.
The financial crackdown coincides with a sharp escalation in military tensions.
Just after the U.S. began battering Iran with missiles, American prosecutors launched a legal attack against the brothers.
On March 6, the U.S. Department of Justice filed two civil forfeiture actions in federal court in Washington, D.C., targeting accounts holding more than $15.3 million. The Justice Department alleges the accounts are part of “a network of individuals, front companies, shipping companies, and financial institutions” led by Hossein Shamkhani.
U.S. authorities seized these funds in early 2026 after Hossein’s alleged “front companies” attempted wire transfers through the U.S. financial system. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement that her country has “zero tolerance for foreign actors using the U.S. financial system to prop up our nation’s enemies.”
While Hossein’s brother, Abolfazl Shamkhani, is not personally under sanctions, prosecutors allege he manages several firms belonging to the network. These include a front company responsible for $2 million of seized wire transfers. He has not been criminally charged, but court filings in the forfeiture case reveal that Abolfazl uses multiple aliases, including“Hassan Shamkhani” and “Sami Hayek.”
‘Enhanced Life’
UAE property records show the brothers initially used their Iranian names to acquire high-end Dubai real estate. “Mohammad Hossein Sham Khani” and “Abolfazl Ali Shamkhani” were listed as the buyers of two villas in the exclusive Golf Place complex, three doors down from one another, in July 2019.
A marketing catalogue describes the development as a “luxury villa community” featuring “lush fairways, winding walkways, meticulously landscaped parks and gardens, as well as vast open spaces that would enhance the life of every resident.”
The villa purchased by Abolfazl is featured on the website of a design firm that claimed to have worked on the property for a “private client” in 2022. Photos show sleek, luxury interiors, a sumptuous terrace with outdoor lounges and entertaining spaces, and an azure swimming pool overlooking a sprawling golf course.
Reporters found that the titles for these neighboring villas are now listed under the names in their Dominica passports — “Hugo Hayek” and “Sami Hayek” — but could not confirm when these changes occurred.
Subsequent real estate purchases were made directly under these Dominica aliases.
In July 2022, Hossein used the Dominican passport to purchase a villa on Jumeirah Bay Island, an exclusive, man-made, seahorse-shaped neighborhood off Dubai’s waterfront. In October of that year, Abolfazl used the name Sami Hayek to buy a luxury residence in the same area, property data shows. They are still owned by the brothers under the aliases.
It is not clear whether the brothers still hold the Dominican passports, however. Authorities of the island nation reportedly revoked Hossein Shamkhani’s passport in response to the U.S. sanctions. Dominican authorities did not respond to a request for comment.
Bros By Different Names
The Shamkhani brothers’ use of the “Hayek” aliases has extended beyond personal real estate assets.
Abolfazl’s alias, Sami Hayek, also appears in European corporate records. In Cyprus corporate filings dated November 2024, he used his Dominica passport and his residence address at the Golf Place villa address in Dubai to register as a limited partner at Saleya Fund RAIF LP, a Cypriot-incorporated “alternative investment fund.” There is no public information about the fund’s activities, and it has yet to file accounts in Cyprus.
The brothers’ Dominica identities also appear in corporate records for a company that OFAC sanctioned for helping ship oil for Russia and Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions.
Company records list Hugo and Sami Hayek among the founding shareholders of the Turkish firm Green Energy Chemicals Enerji Kimyasallari Sanayi Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, incorporated in 2021. The brothers transferred their shares in the firm to the Dubai-based Milavous Group Ltd in November 2023, the records show.
In July 2025, OFAC sanctioned the Turkish firm and Milavous Group, alleging that the parent company helped Hossein Shamkhani in “arranging sales of Iranian oil and gas and laundering the proceeds” and “disguising the Iranian and Russian origin of the oil it sold.”
The EU has also imposed sanctions on Milavous Group over similar allegations that Shamkhani has used it to conceal the origin of Russian oil, while the U.K. sanctioned the firm due to its alleged links to the Iranian oil magnate.
In March, U.S. prosecutors levelled a more direct charge in the civil forfeiture complaints, labeling Milavous Group “de factocorporate holding or management company for many of the Shamkhani associated businesses.”
In a statement to Bloomberg, Hossein Shamkhani said he had “neither founded nor owned” Milavous Group and denied having “any role” in the company’s management. He said he does not own any oil firms, and only operates in countries “not under sanctions,” Bloomberg reported.
In one of the U.S. civil forfeiture complaints, American prosecutors alleged that Hossein “entrusted his brother” to run parts of the Dubai-based company known as Admiral Group, which the EU sanctioned last year.
Hossein “uses the company to transport and sell Russian crude oil,” the EU said in its sanctions notice.
Italian police, acting on a request from the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), have dismantled a clandestine cigarette factory in northern Italy capable of producing four million cigarettes a day, authorities said.
During the raid near Verona, which involved more than 70 officers, police arrested 13 people, including 11 Bulgarian and Ukrainian nationals found working inside and the facility’s two Italian owners. The suspects face charges of smuggling and trademark counterfeiting.
Authorities confiscated the 2-million-euro facility along with 25 tonnes of illicit tobacco products. According to the EPPO, if the confiscated cigarettes had reached the black market, it would have resulted in an annual profit that would exceed 240 million euros ($275.5 million) as well as 3.9 million euro ($4.5 million) revenue loss for European Union and national budgets.
Escalating fears of a crackdown on press freedom ahead of national parliamentary elections, Armenian authorities summoned the top editor of a prominent independent newspaper for questioning over accusations that she called for a violent overthrow of the government.
Armine Ohanyan, the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Hraparak, was interrogated on by the country’s Investigative Committee over an editorial she wrote in December 2024. Following the questioning, she was compelled to sign a non-disclosure agreement, according to her publication.
The investigation centers on Article 422 of the Armenian Criminal Code, a statute that criminalizes public calls for the seizure of power, the breach of territorial integrity, or the violent overthrow of the constitutional order. If formally charged and convicted, Ohanyan faces between two and five years in prison.
The move has sent a chill through the country’s opposition and independent media corps. Hraparak, which has been a persistent critic of the government, characterized the probe as a politically motivated assault designed to muzzle dissent before voters head to the polls.
“Article 422 has become a lifeline for the government and is now a primary tool for political persecution,” the newspaper said in a statement. The publication noted that rumors had circulated for months that law enforcement agencies planned to target “several editors of free media outlets on the eve of the elections.”
The summons drew swift condemnation from political figures, who warned that the ruling party was weaponizing the justice system to neutralize its critics. Mane Tandilyan, a former minister of labor and social affairs, accused the government of dragging up old writings to manufacture a crisis.
“Material written years ago is suddenly being turned into a subject of a criminal case,” Tandilyan said, arguing that the law enforcement apparatus is being appropriated “to silence the speech of the opposition.”
She warned that the government’s actions were inflicting profound damage on the country’s democratic institutions.
“These fears of power have an irreparable impact on our society and, in this case, on the right to free speech,” Tandilyan said. “This is a consistent attempt to restrict free expression by labeling its manifestations as ‘public calls to seize power and overthrow the constitutional order.’”
