Drug dealer-turned-gunrunner sentenced to 30 years
A New Jersey drug dealer who arranged the straw purchases of dozens of guns in exchange for cash and crack cocaine was sentenced yesterday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia to 30 years in prison.
A New Jersey drug dealer who arranged the straw purchases of dozens of guns in exchange for cash and crack cocaine was sentenced yesterday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia to 30 years in prison.
Sean Hagins was a Trenton crack dealer in 2004 when he saw an opportunity to become a gunrunner. Hagins noticed that one of his customers from Pennsylvania, David Downs, had a pickup truck with an NRA sticker on it.
As a felon with multiple convictions for dealing drugs and forgery, Hagins, 37, couldn't buy guns himself.
But Downs could - in Pennsylvania. So, Hagins, according to court testimony, arranged for Downs to buy guns for him.
From January 2004 to June 2005, Downs bought 52 firearms from Bucks County gun shops and then ferried them across the river to New Jersey, where gun-control laws were stricter. Hagins paid Downs, who had a nasty crack habit and had been laid off from a Bensalem belt factory, for the firearms with cash and drugs.
Hagins then turned around and sold pieces of the arsenal - TEC 9s, .50-caliber handguns, and a variety of pistols - to local gang members "feeding the frenzy of violence that Trenton was then experiencing," said Paul Shapiro, the assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the case.
Hagins' operation began to unravel in December 2005, when authorities got a whiff of Downs' numerous purchases and confronted him. Downs confessed, gave up Hagins, and agreed to wear a wire and testify in court.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives launched an investigation that resulted in a federal grand jury indicting Hagins in December 2006 on charges relating to a straw-purchase conspiracy.
On March 7, 2008, a jury in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia found Hagins guilty of the straw-purchase conspiracy and four charges of being a felon in possession of a weapon.
In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Court Judge Legrome D. Davis ordered Hagins to pay a $10,000 fine.
Downs was sentenced last year to 12 months in prison.