United States v. Banki, 685 F.3d 99 (2nd Cir. 2011) is a case related to the transfer of large amounts of money — totaling some $3.4 million — from Iran to the United States. Banki was charged with conspiracy to violate the Iranian Transactions Regulations (the "ITR") and operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business and four other charges. Banki's defense argued these transfers were necessary to protect the family's assets. In 2010, Mahmoud Reza Banki, an Iranian-American, was prosecuted by the United States Attorney's office in New York City. He was charged with violating the US sanctions against Iran. Banki was arrested and spent 22 months in prison before winning his case on appeal in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals with all the sanctions charges against him being dismissed. Ultimately, Banki won his case on appeal and the case was permanently closed in July 2012. Banki spoke publicly for the first time about his case at TED Talk in 2014. He has spoken before various audiences and in The Moth podcast released January 2017, Banki spoke to the personal toll of the ordeal. Background Mahmoud Reza Banki, is an Iranian-American and a US citizen. He immigrated to the United States in the 1990s to attend college at the University of California at Berkeley and later at Princeton University. He was working at McKinsey & Company at the time of the case. Between 2006 and 2009, Banki's family sent proceeds of his parents' divorce settlement, approximately $3.4 million to him, from Iran to the US. The money came into a single bank account at Bank of America, over multiple transfers through an informal money transfer systems which the defendant argued was legal and the only means of sending money out of Iran at the time. Banki used the majority of this money to purchase an apartment in downtown Manhattan. Prosecutors argued that over this three-year period, between 2006 and 2009, Banki had allegedly violated the US-imposed Iran sanctions. Sanctions history The United States enforces sanctions against several countries worldwide. These sanctions are instituted by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) under the Department of Treasury of the United States. The US Treasury's OFAC designates family money as exempt from the sanctions law. A detailed letter by former head of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Richard Newcomb, to the court during the case of US v. Banki outlined the