80-year-old Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni a naturalized U.S. citizen from Argentina, was indicted in 2010 after a two-year federal investigation in which he promised an undercover agent posing as a Venezuelan intelligence official that he could help Venezuela build 40 nuclear missiles in 20 years by 2030.
In recordings played today in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, the suspect tells an FBI agent posing as a Venezuelan official that the bombs would prevent the United States from invading the socialist South American country.
“Nobody dies from this explosion, but we’ve destroyed the electric power in New York with an EMP pulse — electromagnetic pulse. That is … full deterrence.”
“We blow this on top of New York,” Mascheroni is recorded as having told the undercover agent.
Mascheroni was sentenced to five years in prison and three years of supervised release on two counts of communication of restricted data, two counts of conversion of government property, one count of retention of national defense information and six counts of making false statements.
His wife, Marjorie Mascheroni was sentenced to a year and a day for conspiring with her husband.
