Two years ago, 20 federal agents donning full tactical gear and assault rifles raided the Hillside home of Anchorage resident Sergey Nefedov at 6 am. His teenage son and girlfriend were placed in handcuffs and much of his property was seized under a bogus federal search warrant. The agents were part of a Department of Justice Task Force comprising the FBI, Homeland Security, and Department of Commerce.
This Landmine article from June 2024, “Feds send armed agents to raid Hillside home and arrest man accused of trying to sell snowmachines in Russia,” details the absurdity of the case.
Nefedov and another man, Mark Shumovich, faced federal charges for what the government said was illegally attempting to export snow machines to Russia. The Department of Justice put out a 1,000 word press release that read like it was written during the Cold War. The government claimed snow machines are “luxury goods” and made it seem the snow machines in question were somehow going to aid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The snow machines were supposed to go to Kamchatka, a region 4,500 miles from Ukraine. Kamchatka is closer to Alaska than Ukraine.
Nefedov has lived in Anchorage since 2004. I also moved to Alaska in 2004 and met Sergey not long after arriving. We have been friends since. He is one of the most care free and laid back people I know. He has no criminal background and was facing charges for non-violent crimes. The spectacle of the armed raid and lengthy press release was clearly the government trying to put on an anti-Russia show while Donald Trump was challenging then-President Joe Biden.
Nefedov spent a week in jail. The government fought his release.
Adam Alexander, a senior lawyer with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alaska, made the bizarre suggestion that the Russian Federation would furnish Nefedov with a replacement travel document and smuggle him to Canada so he could flee the country. Nefedov’s public defender, Ben Muse, pointed out the ridiculousness of that assertion, and added that if Nefedov were to flee to Russia he would likely be conscripted to fight in Ukraine.
Nefedov was ultimacy released from jail, but was confined to house arrest and had to wear an ankle monitor. Restrictions were eventually loosened, but at one point he was required to wear a location monitoring watch that needed to be charged for three hours a day. He could not take off the watch. He was not able to go to Russia to see his mom when she suffered a stroke last year.
Nefedov refused to take a deal with the government because he knew he did nothing wrong. He refused a deal knowing the 12 counts he was facing could result in more than a decade in prison.
Luckily for Nefedov, he had a very skilled public defender, Ben Muse.
Muse worked diligently to prove Nefedov’s innocence. A March 2026 motion from Muse to suppress evidence collected from the search details multiple egregious errors made by the government including relying on a provision that applied to North Korea instead of Russia, withholding relevant information, and erroneously claiming snow machines are luxury goods.
Here are some of the most damning parts of the motion:
In this case, the government initiated a criminal investigation into Mr. Nefedov based on a mistaken belief that Mr. Nefedov violated export regulations by attempting to export snow machines to Russia in November 2022 without a license. But, in November 2022, no license was required.
The mistake originated from a “licensing determination” drafted by Ronald Rolfe, a licensing officer with the Bureau of Industry and Security. Little is known about Mr. Rolfe. In his licensing determination, he cites to a completely inapplicable regulatory provision applying only to North Korea (Supplement 1 to 15 C.F.R. 746.4) and states that, based on this provision, a license was required to export snow machines to Russia.
As this pleading will detail, Bureau of Industry and Security Special Agent Jeffry Homuth’s misstatement/omission in the warrant was reckless—he had obvious reasons to doubt the information he included—and the Court should grant Mr. Nefedov’s motion to suppress. Further, the evidentiary hearing revealed additional reckless omissions Homuth made in his warrant application: because of the sanctions, (a) most legal exports to Russia during the period in question were sent via a third country; (b) monetary transactions from Russia through China to the U.S. were also common.
It appears from the way in which this was drafted—the inclusion of the reference to 746.10—that SA Homuth doubted the information he received in the license determination and was seeking some way in which to reconcile it with his own interpretation of the regulations. In doing so, he presents a misleading depiction of the law. The Court can see that 746.1017 clearly instructs the reader to reference Supplement 5—which at the time—March 2023—stated that snow machines valued at less than $50,000 were not luxury goods (i.e., all the snow machines at issue in this case).18 There is so little ambiguity that it suggests that SA Homuth just did not do the work of actually reading and considering the regulation. But he frames his affidavit in a way to suggest that the analysis was his as a BIS agent with years of regulatory enforcement experience. It would have been simple to state that he was relying on the work of another—i.e., Rolfe’s license determination. SA Homuth testified that he did not know the person who wrote the license determination and had no idea whether they were credible. There is no evidence that a license determination is even intended to be relied on for something as serious as a criminal prosecution. How different is this meaningfully different from querying Lexis Protégé, Westlaw Advantage, or even ChatGPT for legal analysis? The risk of relying on such an opinion is obvious, and the reliance is reckless.
Finally, though the extent of SA Homuth’s involvement remains unclear, the government’s decision not to disclose the error in the license determination on which several warrants, an indictment, and other filings, were based to opposing counsel or the court colors the behavior in this case. If this error were an innocuous and understandable mistake, why not disclose it to the defense when it was discovered?
The strong implication of Homuth’s warrant application in this case is that the contract between the Russian Company and the Hong Kong Company, and the shipment of these snow machines to Hong Kong, was inherently suspect and a strong indication of intent to evade sanctions. But by SA Homuth’s own testimony, it was not. This is how business was normally conducted. These facts were clearly within SA Homuth’s “ken” and it is obvious that this contextual information is the kind of thing the judge would wish to know in evaluating a warrant application. This omitted information was material and should have been disclosed in the warrant application. It is highly relevant contextual information to the mental state of the parties involved.
On April 8, the court said that it was going to rule in favor of Muse’s motion, effectively ending the government’s frivolous and heavy handed case against Nefedov. The court instructed Muse to determine what evidence should be thrown out due to the government’s shady actions. This kind of ruling from a federal judge rarely happens to U.S. attorneys.
A month later, the government finally gave up to save face. On May 13, Judge Sharon Gleason signed a motion to dismiss all charges against Nefedov without prejudice.
But the ordeal is far from over for Nefedov. The government sold his 17 snow machines and hundreds of thousands of dollars parts in an auction. He has not been compensated for the snow machines, parts, or shipping costs he incurred. This totals around $500,000.
Nefedov effectively lost two years of his life due to the reckless actions of the government. Nefedov told the Landmine:
The government took two years of my life, which I can never get back. I spent Father’s Day 2024 in jail. I have two children that this whole experience deeply affected, namely my teenage son who was held at gunpoint, handcuffed, and who spent the last two years in fear his dad might spend years in prison. I have a heart condition and I was denied my medication while I was in jail.
I came to this country for the opportunities America affords and have made a good and honest life here. The government could have knocked on my door and talked to me instead of barging into my home with guns. I have spent the last two years in constant fear that I might end up in prison for doing nothing wrong.
The United States was founded on the principle of justice for all. I grew up in a place where justice often depends on who you know or how much money you have. Even though it took two years, I am happy and relieved that justice ultimately prevailed. I am so thankful to all the people who helped me through this horrible ordeal. Now I just need to get compensated for all the property they took from me, and sold without my knowledge or permission.