DALLAS: A man who played a leading role in the smuggling of AR-15 and AK-74 rifles from North Texas into Mexico was sentenced to five years in federal prison, the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas said.
Jose Maria DeLeon, 57, was involved with the trafficking of more than 600 firearms. So far, 50 of them have been recovered in Mexico, federal authorities said.
DeLeon bought hundreds of firearm receivers and paid others to turn them into fully-functional firearms, authorities said. He then sold them for a profit to people who smuggled them across the border into Mexico, authorities said.
DeLeon, of Camp Wood, Texas, has been in custody since October 2014 on a related federal criminal complaint.
Between December 2010 and May 2011, DeLeon bought the receivers — which contain the gun’s operating parts such as the bolt, trigger and magazine — at North Texas gun shows, authorities said. Most of them were for AR-15 and AK-74 rifles.
DeLeon paid men he met at a Fort Worth gun show to turn the receivers into fully functional rifles.
Fort Worth police officers working security at a 2011 gun show noticed DeLeon and two others acting suspiciously.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives began an investigation into people “showing suspicious purchasing patterns that may be involved in possible trafficking and unlicensed dealer schemes,” a federal complaint said.
Agents searched the home of one of the men in 2011 and found “significant gun manufacturing tools,” including a “large metal press,” the complaint said.
That man told agents that DeLeon said he worked for the state education department in computer systems and “had ties to the Border Patrol with a government agency called BorTex,” the complaint said.
DeLeon also told the man he was a former Navy Seal who provided weapons training to civilian farmers near the Texas border, authorities said.
But in reality, DeLeon sold the rifles to people who took them across the border into Mexico. ATF officials learned that some of the rifles were used in crimes in Mexico. And someone said DeLeon was connected to the Mexican drug cartels, the complaint said.
Some of the guns DeLeon sold were found hidden inside the gas tank of a vehicle stopped at the Mexican border in January 2013, authorities said.
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