Ex police officer illegally sells 500 guns, many to crooks

[n2doc]

501 weapons tied to one man, many crimes

By SHARON COHEN
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- There were 501 guns in all, the government says -- revolvers and pistols, Glocks and Rugers, and a few rifles, too -- a giant cache of firearms suitable for sport or self-protection.

Or felonies. Or terrorism.

Five hundred and one guns, tied to one man -- 35-year-old Mark Nelson, a former Columbus policeman who flooded the streets with weapons.

Nelson says he didn't knowingly do anything wrong. But prosecutors say he enlisted his family and others, including a drug dealer, to illegally acquire 501 guns, then directly -- or indirectly -- sold many of them.

And soon after -- within days, in a few cases -- some of these guns began turning up in the wrong hands and the wrong places:

A Raven Arms .25-caliber pistol used in a Brooklyn, N.Y., shooting. A Ruger 9 mm handgun found on a man charged with crack possession in Washington, D.C. A Smith & Wesson .40-caliber pistol recovered in Youngstown, Ohio, in a car driven by a man inexplicably wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a winter facemask -- in May.

It's all part of the shadowy world of gun trafficking, where lies, stealth and cold cash make it alarmingly easy for deadly weapons to be bought and sold -- and surface days, months, even years later in crimes.

This is the story of how one trafficking case unfolded and how a handful of people, bogus paperwork, the lure of profit and the constant demand for weapons combined for a black-market scheme that could haunt investigators for decades. More than 300 guns remain missing.

"They're lost in the system," says federal prosecutor Doug Squires. "The point is, we don't know where they are -- and that's the real danger."

When a federal judge recently sentenced Nelson to the maximum 10 years in prison, he called the former officer's behavior "a great risk to the public."
Nelson said he was trying to sell guns as a business to supplement his police disability -- he wasn't working because of back problems.

Nelson, a police officer for almost eight years, couldn't buy a gun himself because he was facing a charge in a road rage incident. So he enlisted others to claim they were the buyers.

His wife, Phaedra, for instance, said she bought 168 guns. His brother, Ricky, bought 83, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. His father-in-law and two other men bought others. All pleaded guilty.

As proof that he didn't hide his business, Nelson noted he bought and sold weapons to police officers. But federal agents paint a far more sinister picture.

They say Nelson traveled to Minnesota and Washington, D.C., to make deals and sold guns from his car trunk, hotel rooms and guns shows, where an undercover ATF informant bought 26 weapons, even though the informant told him he had a "lot of felonies" and planned to resell them to drug dealers.

"He had no regard for who the guns were going to," says Wayne Dixie, the Columbus ATF chief. "He didn't care because it was a moneymaking scheme. Maybe there was some prestige, too. He's known as the guy to go to for guns. ... 'You need a quick firearm, you can come to me. I'm your man.' "

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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/305983_501guns03.html

[Blue_Tires]

1. k+r

shameful...

there was a country sheriff somewhere in rural VA that was doing the same thing...pretty much stealing the guns from one criminal set to sell them to another...

[Hangingon]

2. Great! Law breakers should be prosecuted.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. He's a cop and he doesn't know this is wrong? What's that line about ignorance of the

law is no excuse? What about feigned ignorance?