The prosecution by the U.S. attorney in Atlanta  of a renowned Iranian medical researcher and two of his former students now teaching in the U.S. includes a fourth physician—an Iranian American who fled persecution in his home country three decades ago.

But indictments of Iranian national Matteo Taerri—a former Atlanta physician now living in Tampa, Florida—by federal grand juries in Atlanta and Florida and court records in those cases suggest that federal authorities led by agents with the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security may have cobbled together an alleged conspiracy.