Overview
- Sharon Gohari, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Roslyn, New York, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court to alien smuggling and intentionally receiving child sexual abuse material.
- Prosecutors say he ran a paid smuggling pipeline from late 2020 to 2025 that routed clients through Turkey and Mexico and used visas obtained at the Mexican embassy in Iran.
- One migrant he helped reach the U.S. in 2021 admitted doing tasks for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the U.S. labels a foreign terrorist organization.
- Agents who searched Gohari’s devices after a January 24, 2025 stop at JFK Airport found videos of young children being sexually abused and hundreds of covert recordings of women in New York City.
- The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force led the probe, and DOJ’s National Security and Cybercrime Section is prosecuting, with Gohari facing five to 20 years on the child exploitation count and up to 10 years for smuggling.