The Other Sean Byrne Doesn't Exist — Sean Byrne

Earlier this year Apple denied me access to App Store Connect after deciding that I matched someone on a U.S. government restricted-party list.

Their explanation was fairly definitive:

“The information you provided fully matches one or more restricted parties on the U.S. government consolidated screening list or another government’s sanctions list.”

They already had my passport.

I replied with my full legal name, Sean Joseph Byrne, uploaded my driver’s license, and pointed out the address on the government record they appeared to be matching me against. I’ve never lived at that address, never lived in County Sligo, and have no connection to the company involved. I asked them to escalate it to their sanctions compliance folks and make a proper non-match determination.

Apple still hasn’t replied.

Apple’s response after reviewing my identity information.

I knew what had happened because this wasn’t the first time.

Cloonmull House

Search the U.S. government’s Consolidated Screening List for Sean Byrne and you get exactly one result:

Sean Byrne

Cloonmull House

Drumcliffe, County Sligo

Ireland

Source: Entity List, Bureau of Industry and Security

Added: July 21, 2009

License requirement: All items subject to the EAR

License policy: Presumption of denial

The Consolidated Screening List isn’t itself a sanctions list. It’s a U.S. government screening tool that combines a number of export-control, sanctions and other restricted-party lists maintained by the Departments of Commerce, State and Treasury.

The result comes from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security Entity List. “All items subject to the EAR” means the Export Administration Regulations, the rules governing what U.S. companies can ship abroad. “Presumption of denial” is a licensing posture: if someone applies for a licence to export something to this person, the default answer is no. That’s the entire purpose. It’s an export-control instrument but it says nothing about who can be employed, or who can sell shares.

The person in the search result isn’t me. More interestingly, it doesn’t appear to be anyone.

The entry came out of the prosecution of an Irish aircraft-parts business called Mac Aviation. In 2009, the Department of Justice described Sean Byrne as Mac Aviation’s commercial manager and charged him alongside Thomas and Sean McGuinn over the illegal export of U.S. aircraft equipment to Iran.

Except Mac Aviation had apparently invented employees to make the company look bigger than it was.

Mac Aviation was a father and son working out of a cottage on the edge of Drumcliffe village, Ben Bulben behind it. A Rolls-Royce official who came to visit was reportedly speechless. The company he had been selling helicopter engines to, and had taken for a global operation employing hundreds of professionals, was a house in Sligo.

Drumcliffe, County Sligo, with Ben Bulben in the background.

To keep up the impression of a much larger firm, the McGuinns signed documents with false names. Sean Byrne was one of them. John Mooney reported in the Sunday Times that the name appeared on so much company paperwork that the American authorities “became convinced Byrne existed and tried to indict him.”

When DOJ filed a superseding indictment in 2010, replacing the original, Sean Byrne was no longer a defendant. The defendants were Mac Aviation and Thomas and Sean McGuinn.

More importantly, the superseding indictment repeatedly describes Sean Byrne as an alias used by one or more co-conspirators. The phrase appears more than fifteen times, attached to specific invoices, emails and an ownership statement. Mac Aviation staff used the name with suppliers in the U.S. and customers in Iran.

At some stage the U.S. government appears to have worked out that Sean Byrne wasn’t actually a separate person. And yet the entry in the Entity List survived. Sixteen years later it still has no date of birth, passport number, middle name or other useful personal identifier. It’s basically a common Irish name, an address in Sligo and Ireland.

Cloonmull House in Sligo was Thomas McGuinn’s home, and the indictment gives it as Mac Aviation’s registered mailing address. So the entry isn’t a record of a man in Sligo. It’s a name attached to somebody else’s house. And I’ve never lived in Sligo.

This has happened before

Years before I moved back to Ireland, I was selling stock through a tender offer when Nasdaq stopped my order after a background check returned a match on my name.

Their Head of Account Management emailed me saying that the check had found a match associated with a previous incident and that he was confident it was a false positive, but compliance wanted additional proof of my California address. On the phone he gave me more detail and specifically asked me about Mac Aviation. I explained that I’d never had anything to do with the company, provided the extra documentation they wanted and...