Rocket-propelled grenade launchers, claymore mines, AK47s, machine guns, shoulder-launched missiles, and enriched uranium were among the weapons arms dealers offered to sell to an FBI informant last year, federal prosecutors said yesterday.

At least 18 men hatched a complicated scheme to smuggle numerous assault weapons into America from Russia and Eastern Europe and to sell the arsenal to an informant posing as an arms trafficker with connections to terrorist organizations, prosecutors said in an indictment unsealed in federal court yesterday. During a year-long FBI surveillance operation, the men allegedly smuggled in eight weapons that they stashed in storage facilities in New York, Los Angeles, and Fort Lauderdale, and had another cache ready to be shipped into the country, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, David Kelley, said.

When they opened the storage locker located in downtown Manhattan, agents involved in the joint FBI-NYPD investigation found a Norinoco model long-gun equipped with two loaded bullet clips, an Israeli military-issue Uzi, 31 rounds of 9mm ammunition, and a 9mm assault rifle wrapped in a plastic bag from a Gap clothing store.

“This case posted a big ‘Keep Out’ sign for arms traffickers everywhere,” the city’s police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said. “They’re not welcome, especially not in New York.”

According to the indictment, the roster of international arms smugglers included Artur Solomonyan, 26, an Armenian citizen who lives in New York and Los Angeles; and Christian Dewet Spies, 33, a South African citizen who lives in New York.

In a series of surreptitious meetings and coded telephone conversations in which they referred to assault rifles and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles as “puppies” and “stingers,” Mr. Spies allegedly enlisted the informant’s help in securing a buyer for a stash of weapons held by a contact affiliated with the Russian mafia. Mr. Spies believed that the informant intended to sell the weapons to terrorists of Middle Eastern descent, prosecutors said.

Messrs. Solomonyan and Spies allegedly orchestrated a deal to provide the informant with approximately $2.5 million worth of assault rifles, explosive mines, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and more using an informal network of arms traffickers in Miami, New York, Los Angeles, and Eastern Europe, prosecutors said.

As late as February, police said, the two men had given the informant a username and password to a Russian email account that contained e-mail messages with photos of 17 additional weapons available for purchase.

For their roles, Messrs. Solomonyan and Spies, who were both in this country illegally, have been charged with several counts of weapons trafficking and could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.