So you walk into a neighborhood store to spend some of your hard-earned money, if you’re fortunate enough to have a job. You’re there to buy designer clothing, athletic shoes, jewelry and…drug paraphernalia. The store opened in early 2012. Get your jewelry and drug paraphernalia right here – one stop shopping. What you don’t know is the store is a total BATF “storefront sting” operation. The agents behind the counter are there to buy drugs and guns from felons. Few felons were interested in taking their business to “Fearless Distributing.” The store shutdown after 10 months, leaving the landlord with a boatload of unpaid utility bills and damage to his property. Apparently BATF officers don’t know how to flush a toilet, but they do know how to get an M-4 fully automatice .223 Caliber Machine Gun lost on the streets, while blowing off your taxpayer dollars. Get this: a suspect hid the M-4 under his bed, was arrested, refused to talk, and was released. How did they know it was under his bed?
When the 10-month operation was shut down after the burglary, agents and Milwaukee police officers who participated in the sting cleared out the store but left behind a sensitive document that listed names, vehicles and phone numbers of undercover agents.
And the agency remains locked in a battle with the building’s owner, who says he is owed about $15,000 because of utility bills, holes in the walls, broken doors and damage from an overflowing toilet.
The sting resulted in charges being filed against about 30 people, most for low-level drug sales and gun possession counts. But agents had the wrong person in at least three cases. In one, they charged a man who was in prison – as a result of an earlier ATF case – at the time agents said he was selling drugs to them.Source: Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel
Citizens, maybe shady, maybe not, sold guns to Fearless Distributing, receiving top dollar (your top tax dollar):
ATF agents were paying top dollar for the guns, court documents show. For instance, Vance Fields sold a Smith & Wesson .40 caliber handgun to agents at Fearless in September for $1,250, according the criminal complaint. That model has sold for roughly $400 to $700 in online auctions recently.
In one case, Brandon Gladney sold more than 30 guns to ATF agents, including some that he and Courvoisie Bryant bought at Gander Mountain, according to court documents. Bryant is charged in federal court with being a straw buyer – someone who purchases firearms for another person who is prohibited from having them.
Daniel Stiller, head of the federal defender’s service in Milwaukee, said such undercover operations are rare. The case involving Gladney and Bryant suggested to him that those defendants weren’t major criminals given they got guns from a store, not the street.
“I have to guess a true criminal on the streets of Milwaukee has the ability to obtain a firearm when needed from something other than a store,” Stiller said.
Along with the M-4 .223-caliber fully automatic rifle stolen from an agent’s vehicle was a Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun and a Sig Sauer .40-caliber pistol. The M-4 and the Smith & Wesson haven’t been found, although the article says a “suspect” hid it under his bed. The suspect was questioned, “refused to talk” and was released. How does anyone know the M-4 was hidden under bed??? The suspect name was not revealed in the JSOnline article. Somewhere there’s an M-4 machine gun on the loose. Is this Fast and Furious II? Is there another victim like Brian Terry yet to report?
The Sig Sauer was sold back to Fearless Distributing the day after the theft by Marquise Jones for $1,400.00. Jones wasn’t arrested for two months, and when he was, then not for the theft from the BATF vehicle, or at least not named in the theft. The whole thing reads like the Keystone Cops.
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Keystone cops indeed… unbelievable.
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Susan Duclos, Reckless disregard of taxpayer monies and the rule of law. It’s shameful. I pity the local police who were embroiled with this.
The thieves steal the guns from the ATF and then sell them back to the ATF. What a circus.
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