CONCORD, NH – FBI agents accuse the owner of a mysterious chemical export company based in a Manchester apartment of lying to agents doing an investigation into where, exactly, the chemicals were going.
Stela Sacara, 34, also known as Stela Secara and Stela Thomas, is being charged in the United States District Court in Concord on one count of making a false statement to federal agents when she allegedly tried to obscure her role in the company.
Court records indicate that Sacara may be sending chemicals and equipment to military clients in countries that are under some form of embargo.
Special Agent Kyle Zavorotny, who in a complaint filed in court describes himself as a specialist in espionage investigations, states that Sacara created emails for a ficticious company employee and sent messages to the agents to throw off the investigation, and keep hidden what is being sent overseas and to whom.
“Stela’s false statements regarding the identity of the company management and distancing herself from her role furthers this goal by minimizing her own knowledge of the end-users and causing investigators to waste efforts attempting to locate individuals who do not exist,” Zavorotny wrote.
Zavorotny and Special Agent Courtney Rauch first interviewed Sacara in September of 2018 as the FBI and the United States Commerce Department’s Office of Export Enforcement were trying what she was doing with her businesses.
“Based on my training and experience, I know that entities in foreign countries will sometimes disguise the true end-users of products acquired from the United States to prevent or impede the ability of the United States Government to determine the activities of these end-users,” Zavorotny wrote. “In many instances, the end-users being disguised are or are affiliated with the military or other agencies of the governments of the countries in which these end users are located.”
Sacara owned and operated multiple companies from her Chestnut Street apartment, including Rochester Chemical LLC, Newedge Technology LLC, Cryotec LLC, Pharmakom LLC, and Sublime Beauty LLC.
Sacara told the agents that she did not manage the business, but that she reported to another woman, Amy Johnson, who is based in Delaware. Sacara said she did not have contact information for Johnson, according to the complaint.
Sacara claimed that Rochester Chemical acquires consumable laboratory equipment such as bottles, vials, glassware, etc. for use in laboratories from various manufacturers, repackages them and ships them to purchasers, Zavorotny wrote. Sacara told the investigators that the only company to which Rochester Chemical exports goods is a German company called Riol-Chemie.
The agents obtained a warrant for her bank records and other business information and determined that Sacara was in fact the managing member for Rochester Chemical, and listed as the sole member of the corporation.
Knowing this, the investigators went back to Sacara in January of 2019 and confronted her.
“I asked Stela whether Johnson truly exists, and showed her a copy of the Bank of America document in which she stated that she (Stela) was the sole member of the limited liability company,” Zavorotny wrote. “Stela stated she wished to speak with an attorney and declined to speak with us further. Stela was provided with my business card.”
Soon, the agents started getting emails from a company official named “Radu Bolocan” who claimed to be the current owner of Rochester Chemical. Bolocan claimed to live in Romania, and also claimed that he or she did not speak English.
“(H)owever, the English in the e-mail was nearly perfect,” Zavorotny wrote.
The person identifying as Bolocan also claimed that the Amy Johnson persona was adopted by an Indian company employee named Lanjewar Dulichand, on the theory that the Indian name would be too hard for others to spell and pronounce.
The agents tracked the digital information for Bolocan, as well as other emails from Sacara, and determined that the Bolocan email accounts were created by a user in Manchester right after the January interview with the agents. A review of several years’ worth of emails found that Sacara and her sister, Natalia Sacara, also known as Natalia Bolocan, were the owners and operators of the company, Zavorotny wrote.
Sacara is from Moldova and currently subject to a deportation proceeding, according to court records. She is under orders to not leave the country, currently, according to court records.