Host: Maggie Cino

Maggie: [00:00:01] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Maggie Cino, senior producer here at The Moth, filling in for Dan Kennedy. 

We don't normally put a story on the podcast soon after it's been told live, but on this week's episode, we'll be hearing a story from Mahmoud Reza Banki that was told just a few weeks ago at a Mainstage in Los Angeles. The theme of the night was Conviction. Here is Mahmoud Reza Banki.

[cheers and applause] 

Mahmoud: [00:00:30] Thank you. As a fearless and ambitious teenager in Tehran, I believed I could do anything if I was given a chance. I wanted to be shoulder to shoulder with the best and the brightest. I wanted to be in America. My family lived through the Eight Year War in the 1980s when Saddam Hussein attacked Iran. Looking back now, the red alert sirens in the middle of the night, Iraqi missiles and fighter jet assaults, getting into bunkers as a child, all seemed routine and normal. I didn't know another world. 

I left my family and came to the US when I was 18. I learned how to speak English from my tutor David Letterman, [audience laughter] every night on CBS. By the time I graduated from UC Berkeley, I felt like I finally belonged. I went on to Princeton to get my Ph.D in chemical engineering and biotech. I became a US citizen. I took a job at a top consulting firm in New York City. I fell in love with a Canadian theatre actress. I was on top of the world. [audience chuckles] 

And then, one day, I got a call from my mom. My dad was having an affair. The more I learned, the more I was upset and ashamed. I wanted to do whatever I could to help my mother. Divorce for women in Iran is traumatic. Usually, the man has the final say over what happens to the woman. My uncle, my mom's brother, and I did everything we could to preserve some dignity from my mother after a 34-year marriage, and sent the money my uncle and his son secured from my mom to me in the US where it would be safe.

January 7th, 2010, 06:30 AM, my girlfriend wakes me up. She asks if I hear the loud banging. Half asleep in my underwear, I walk to the front door of my apartment in New York City. As soon as I open the door, men in black SWAT gear, guns drawn, rush into my apartment. They slam me against the wall and handcuff me. They bring me a pair of pants and rush me off into a minivan. I am in shock. No Miranda rights, no attorney, no explanation. 

They take me to an interrogation facility. By 03:00 PM, I'm locked in a cage outside a courtroom, when an agent hands me an indictment. I flip through it frantically. I was being charged with violating the US sanctions on Iran. Minutes later, I'm before the judge and I plead not guilty. They then lock me up in maximum security isolation. When the solid metal door closed behind me, the gravity of my new surroundings started to sink in. Concrete walls, an 8-foot by 8-foot cell, a metal bunk and a metal toilet. I was freezing in my orange jumpsuit. 

I stood in my prison cell, and for hours at a time I asked the guards if I could make one call to an attorney. Why were they treating me this way? By the third night, 24-hour isolation was wearing away at me. I laid down on my metal bunk and quietly I cried. Not because I was scared, cold or hungry, I cried because I could not be heard. Four days after my arrest, the marshals took me to a room where I sat one side of a metal mesh screen. My hands were cuffed behind my back. And on the other side sat a man who told me he was my attorney and that my bail hearing was in 30 minutes. 

He started, "So tell me, Reza, when did you come to the US, where did you go and what did you do?" My heart was racing. How could this man, who knew nothing about me, represent me? I didn't have time to ask questions. I started unloading information about myself as fast as I could. The transfer of mom's divorce settlement from Iran to the US had set off an investigation. The indictment charged that receiving this money was a violation of the sanctions. I knew the law, and I knew family money was an exception. 

Even though I had no means of escape, no passport, assets all frozen, prosecutors claimed I was a flight risk. The judge said, "I see no combination of circumstances that will ensure Mr. Banki's presence. Bail denied.” No bail means the deck is stacked against you. It means you're stuck in maximum and high security prison. It's tough enough to stay sane, let alone fight a court case. 

We found out the prosecutors had been investigating me for two years. They'd been monitoring me. They searched my apartment, my laptop, cell phone, bank accounts. They questioned people who knew me. They had access to my entire life. By the time we got to trial, we got the discovery. All that evidence, the ledgers, list of customers, an underground banking operation, an international money broker network, it didn't exist. So, months after I was arrested and right before trial, prosecutors added false statement charges. They claimed in these new charges that I misrepresented where mom's money came from. I had said my uncle and his son. The prosecutors claim this money came from my father. 

Back in the 1980s, my parents had invested in a company that was run by my cousin and my uncle, my mom's brother and his son. This was the only asset and not under the control of my father and the only reason mom got this money. I didn't understand how prosecutors who had never spoken to my family, hadn't seen a bank statement from Iran, didn't know the details of the divorce, were so sure of my family's circumstances. My attorney believed the new false statements were prosecutors salvaging a case that they all but lost. [silence] 

On the last day of trial, my attorney came to see me at my cage outside the courtroom. I felt like I could be free soon, but this nightmare may be over. The sanctions law has an exception for family money. The judge did not think this was relevant and kept it out. We also found the former director of the sanctions program in the US from 1987 to 2004, he agreed to testify on my behalf. The judge would not allow it. This man sat down with President Clinton and wrote the very law they were prosecuting me on. His testimony alone could have cleared me. 

The jury went into deliberation not knowing that under the law, family money transfers of this kind are permitted. Deliberation took four hours. I sat at the defense bench with my attorney by my side. The courtroom had a tall ceiling and two tall windows to match. I looked out the window at the skyline, at the buildings that seemed so far away and wondered when I would be part of that world again. The judge asked us all to stand as the jury foreman read out, “We, the jury, find the defendant guilty.” And then, each individual juror confirmed their guilty verdict. 

The room was spinning. I sat and put my hands on the table. I couldn't feel my arms before all the faces and standing figures in the courtroom. My world had just collapsed. My life flashed past me, and I had no say in it. I knew that no matter what, my life will never be the same again. 

After nearly two years of incarceration, I finally won on appeal. The appellate court ruled that the sanctions charges could not stand, and they were overturned because the jury did not get the family money exception to the law. But the prosecution tactic with the false statements to salvage a win worked. These charges about who sent the family money, uncle, cousin or father, these charges that were not in the original indictment, I didn't win. Essentially, I lost that she said battle to the government. These false statement charges did not carry a prison term, but they remain on my record. And for that, I am a felon for life. 

On the day of my release, my friends came to get me. I stood in the prison parking lot in my prison shorts and T-shirt with a plastic bag of books and notes. On my first drive in two years, I didn't want to talk. I wanted to stare at all that I had missed. The open vista, cars, roads, people walking free. I just won on appeal. I was out of prison. I should have been happy, but I was crying, why did it take so long? Long? 

Prison is no rehab. People don't get out of prison any better than they went in. I didn't. I tore through job applications and interviews. I knew it would only take one company. But 250 job applications and about 100 interviews later, that one job, that one chance, never came. One interviewer told me, “Your resume is stellar.” But then, he asked me what I'd been doing for the last two years. I started to explain, but I couldn't speak fast enough to ease his growing discomfort. He turned around and googled my name. He turned red, started sweating. He looked back at me and told me to get out of his office. I may as well have been wearing that orange jumpsuit. 

Over the last four years, credit card companies have closed my accounts, 11 banks have closed my bank accounts, I can't get a loan or a mortgage, I don't have equal voting rights and on and on. This nightmare is a constant disqualifier. I am not equal. Prison, at some point, ends, the punishment never does. 

My family insists that I should leave the US. Mom says she would have never stayed in a country that wrongfully imprisoned her or made it so difficult to move forward. She asks why I insist on staying in the US. Right now, with no success to speak of, it's a tough question to answer. My attorney says, the only path I have in the US, the only way I can restore my life, is a presidential pardon. I have thrown everything I have at this remote shot. My odds are less than 1%. If I don't get a pardon, I may be left with no choice, but to leave the US. But I still want to believe that my country, that the United States, will eventually come through. Thank you.

[cheers and applause] 

Maggie: [00:15:26] Mahmoud Reza Banki was born in Tehran and has been a US citizen for 20 years. He graduated with a double Bachelor's from UC Berkeley in Applied Mathematics and Chemical Engineering and went on to get his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He's published a biotech book and most recently graduated from the MBA program at UCLA. Reza, all of us at The Moth are thinking of you. We hope you get your pardon very, very soon. For some photos of Reza and more information about his story, visit our website at themoth.org. 

Thanks to all of you for listening and come back for more stories next week. 

Podcast Production by Timothy Lou Ly. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.