On October 27, 2026, the Justice Department announced that Extreme Networks, a North Carolina networking company, will not be prosecuted for selling equipment and services to the Russian plant that builds the S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems. The company pays a $975,721.84 criminal penalty under a non-prosecution agreement. Treasury's sanctions office announced a separate $1,529,685 settlement the same day and called the violations egregious.
The part worth your attention is who hid the buyer. When Reuters exposed the sales in October 2022, Extreme told the news agency the gear may have reached the plant through a surrogate buyer and was sold without its knowledge, blaming a Russian intermediary. The federal record filed four years later says something different. According to DOJ's release, certain Russia-based Extreme employees concealed the plant's identity from the company's own global trade compliance group, which led Extreme to file false export information and smuggle goods out of the United States.
What the records prove
DOJ says that between about March 2018 and March 2022, Extreme's Russian subsidiary, Extreme Networks Rus LLC, filled 11 purchase orders for Moscow Machinery Building Plant Avangard, owned by Almaz-Antey, a company Treasury blacklisted in July 2014. DOJ puts Extreme's revenue from those sales at $487,860.92. The company forfeits that amount and pays a matching fine (DOJ release record).
The Treasury settlement notice counts the conduct differently: nine exports between September 2018 and March 2022. The two agencies do not reconcile the gap in their public releases, and neither says whether one payment is credited against the other, so this story does not add them into a single total.
How a late confession still counts
DOJ admits Extreme's disclosure was not timely because it came "under imminent threat of disclosure by a news publication." DOJ does not name the outlet. The timing lines up with Reuters' 2022 report, in which Extreme said it was reporting its findings to U.S. authorities. Under the department's 2026 corporate enforcement policy, that disclosure still earned "near miss" credit, and DOJ calls this its first non-prosecution agreement of that kind. Treasury went further and labeled the disclosure voluntary.
The company's side deserves its full weight. DOJ credits Extreme with full cooperation, documents and employee interviews, and says it cut off the third-party distributor, tightened screening and hired more compliance staff. DOJ found no aggravating circumstances. Nothing in either release charges any individual, and neither release names the employees involved.
Why it matters
This is analysis: the policy now rewards a company that confesses only after a reporter is already at the door. The penalty roughly doubles the revenue at stake. Ukraine has accused Russia of firing missiles from this plant at its cities. The deterrent message to every exporter selling into sanctioned markets is that getting caught by the press costs less than you might think.
The question worth watching: will DOJ or Treasury charge or name the Russia-based employees its own record says hid the buyer, or does the case end with the company's check?