NEW YORK – In what was a stunning weapons bust, the Manhattan district legal professional stated a neo-Nazi inmate allegedly bought ghost weapons and components behind bars, and was solely caught after one of many his purchasers to be an undercover officer from the NYPD.
Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg stated the white supremacist went on-line and unknowingly bought ghost gun components to the undercover officer whereas he was locked up in a federal jail a thousand miles away. the Louisiana.
“We see this unhappy and tragic mixture all too usually. How gun violence is totally different from gun trafficking and hate and terrorism,” Bragg stated.
An encrypted messaging app as soon as utilized by a racist shooter who killed 10 folks (all African-American) at a Buffalo grocery retailer led investigators to the person promoting ghost gun components from his jail cell.
“Issues that occur in chat rooms right this moment can occur on our streets tomorrow,” Bragg stated.
Police stated Hayden Espinosa, 24, was the moderator of a white supremacist channel that featured “vicious rhetoric and neo-Nazi imagery,” in keeping with Rebecca Weiner, deputy counterterrorism commissioner for the New York Police Division.
Espinosa marketed and bought 3D-printed ghost gun components by cell telephones introduced into the jail, prosecutors allege. His job collapsed, investigators stated, when he bought gun components to an undercover NYPD officer.
“He tried to promote a Glock-19 pistol and ended up promoting, we allege, two silencers,” Bragg stated.
In 2023, the NYPD seized practically 6,500 unlawful weapons on the streets of New York Metropolis, and the division expects to hit the identical quantity once more in 2024.
Investigators stated the conviction reveals how straightforward it’s for criminals to make use of 3D printers to make and promote these lethal switches, which flip pistols into machine weapons.
“Units like these are a hazard in our group and that is why we work on instances like this with our companions,” stated Particular Agent in Cost Bryan Miller of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Narcotics- explosive
Two months in the past, prosecutor Bragg requested YouTube to take away movies that train customers the way to make ghost weapons and to cease recommending movies about weapons to minors. In response, YouTube instituted stricter guidelines concerning gun movies and set age restrictions for ghost gun movies.
Espinoza was launched from a federal jail in Louisiana final week solely to be arrested once more for allegedly promoting ghost gun components. He’s scheduled to be extradited to New York and can face a choose in Decrease Manhattan on June 24. Espinoza’s legal professional data was not instantly accessible.
2024-06-12 03:37:28
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