Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau unsealed a sweeping 118-count indictment of a fugitive Chinese businessman, Li Fang Wei, who is illegally funneling money through New York City banks in order to sell materials to Iran that could be used for building nuclear weapons. Li Fang Wei has been banned from using the U.S. banking system since 2006, but Morgenthau says he created aliases and shell companies to deceive the banks into processing his transactions.

Morgenthau says the investigation shows Iran is "deadly serious" about developing nuclear weapons, and his office will ask the Chinese government to extradite Li Feng Wei so he can be prosecuted locally.