A Florida-based defense contractor, Yuksel Senbol, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for a complex scheme involving fraud, money laundering, and the unlawful export of sensitive military technology. Working with two overseas conspirators, Senbol played a pivotal role in smuggling export-controlled technical data out of the U.S. She deceived the Department of Defense (DoD) into purchasing faulty parts destined for critical military systems. U.S. military testing helped to unearth this fraud scheme.
How the Scheme Worked – And Its Security Risks
Senbol operated Mason Engineering Parts LLC, a front company she used to win DoD contracts by posing as a qualified manufacturer of essential military components. But behind the scenes, her co-conspirators, Mehmet Ozcan and Onur Simsek, were producing the parts in Turkey. This was an intentional violation of U.S. export laws, especially since Simsek had already been debarred from U.S. contracting. The scheme was highly coordinated. Senbol obtained sensitive, export-controlled designs for these components. Then she used software to enable her partners in Turkey to remotely access her computer, bypassing U.S. restrictions on data access.
This export violation is more than just a regulatory breach—it put American military operations at risk. The compromised parts were slated for use in critical systems, including Navy submarines, Marine Corps armored vehicles, and Army M-60 tanks. Upon testing, the DoD found that many of the components failed to meet specifications, posing a risk to the operability of the end systems they were meant to support. As “critical application items,” the failure of these parts could have rendered vital equipment inoperable, a potential risk on the battlefield.
National Security Implications
To make it look as though these components were U.S.-manufactured, Senbol repackaged them, removing any trace of their Turkish origin. The conspirators then billed the U.S. government as if the parts were domestically made, siphoning off hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits back to Turkey.
Cases like these underscore the significance of stringent export controls and the DoD’s need for rigorous vetting in contract approvals. Export-controlled technology isn’t just proprietary information—it’s often the foundation of U.S. battlefield advantage. The fact that two fugitives remain at large highlights the challenge of international cooperation in prosecuting such cases.
With defense supply chain security under constant threat, this case serves as a reminder of the vulnerabilities that adversaries and bad actors seek to exploit, as well as the ongoing necessity of counterintelligence and export control enforcement in safeguarding U.S. military readiness.
