Save<\/a>Share this articleCopy LinkEmailFacebookTwitter\/XLinkedInReddit<\/p>\nA Japanese yakuza member has been sentenced in New York for trafficking nuclear material, drugs and weapons. Photo \/ US Department of Justice<\/p>\n
A member of Japan\u2019s yakuza crime group was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a New York court today after being convicted of trafficking nuclear material as well as drugs and weapons.<\/p>\n
\n Takeshi Ebisawa, 61, has been jailed since April 2022 on the drug and weapons charges, with
\n his Thai co-defendant Somphop Singhasiri, following years of investigations by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.\n <\/p>\n
In February 2024, he was also accused of trying to sell military-grade nuclear material, with narcotics including heroin and methamphetamine, to buy weapons including surface-to-air missiles for armed groups in Myanmar.<\/p>\n
He pleaded guilty to a total of six charges in January 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cTakeshi Ebisawa has been held accountable for his crimes, including an attempt to sell weapons-grade plutonium to Iran and to flood New York with deadly narcotics,\u201d said John Eisenberg, the assistant attorney-general for national security.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AFP 4 Mar, 2026 03:12 AMQuick Read Subscribe to listenAccess to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,95,682,5767,85818,1349,6147,1757,2082,209,42,16847,1036,6287,1329,43,603,8442,5161,1865,40,38,41,39,20923,3040,14191,6436,170087,1530,2173],"class_list":["post-312849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-and","tag-being","tag-convicted","tag-convicts","tag-court","tag-crime","tag-drugs","tag-for","tag-group","tag-headlines","tag-japans","tag-japanese","tag-material","tag-member","tag-news","tag-nuclear","tag-prison","tag-sentenced","tag-today","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trafficking","tag-us","tag-weapons","tag-well","tag-yakuza","tag-years","tag-york"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}