CONCORD, N.H. — Thirteen people have been charged in connection with a sophisticated, international firearms trafficking ring that funneled illegal firearms from New Hampshire through the Akwesasne Mohawk Indian Reservation in New York.
Five of the people charged have pleaded guilty to federal firearms offenses, U.S. Attorney Erin Creegan said during a press conference with other federal officials on Thursday.
Authorities did not release a detailed list of people facing charges on Thursday.
Members of the trafficking network recruited people in and around Keene and Dummerston, Vermont, to make straw purchases, buying firearms on behalf of others who were legally prohibited from doing so at federally licensed dealers in the region, including American Trikes & Motorsports in Keene.
Creegan said several of the 51 firearms trafficked through this pipeline were later recovered at Canadian crime scenes, including during a kidnapping investigation in Montreal and other violent crime investigations in Quebec.
Federal agents have been working in the past several weeks to dismantle the criminal pipeline, Creegan said.
“The allegations paint a troubling picture of how straw purchasing fuels violent criminal networks across the northeast and into Canada,” Creegan said.
“Let me be clear: Straw purchases have real consequences. If you lie on the forms and purchase firearms on behalf of another person, you are not only committing a federal crime yourself, you are potentially placing weapons in the hands of violent criminals,” Creegan said.
The criminal network exploited border geography and reservation corridors to move firearms into Canada to avoid law enforcement detection, she said.
According to court documents, the conspiracy began on or about July 1, 2021, and continued through at least October 2024.
Investigators uncovered that members of the Akwesasne reservation in New York would travel to Vermont, where they enlisted Justin Jackson to purchase firearms on their behalf.
Justin Jackson was prohibited from buying firearms, and so he used other people, Melissa Longe, Dustin Tuttle, and Caleb Wilcott, to obtain firearms that the defendants had requested, Creegan said.
Canadian authorities recover about 17,000 to 20,000 crime guns per year, and about half of those guns are smuggled into Canada from the United States, Special Agent in Charge Tom Greco of the ATF Boston Field Division said Friday.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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