this was how it seems to have started, long read.....highlighted the part where he sold 117 guns in 16 months....from his FB page...think he is referencing a former renowned NES member as the "lawyer"
I just had a felony charge against me dismissed.
This started four years ago, when two ATF special agents knocked on my door.
December 16th 2016, around 10 am, I woke up to loud knocking on my door. I answered in my batrobe (not a typo). They identified themselves and asked if I had a moment to talk. Still half asleep I asked if it could wait half an hour, they said no, and I told them to give me five minutes and then joined them outside. They asked if there was a place we could talk, we walked around the corner to my shop. They started talking to me about "the fitchburg incident", and then seguid into asking about a few purchases I had made. I carefully didn't provide any information they wouldn’t already have, while continuing to ask questions of them, and attempt to ascertain what they were actually investigating. Eventually, they started asking about selling guns, and I answered in vagaries and "I'm sorry, but I don't know off the top of my head", and then lawyered up when they started asking specifics.
I called an attorney I knew from the local gun groups, who was known to be an a**h***, and I'd heard great things about him recently getting a shop reopened. I wanted someone who would be an a**h*** on my behalf. We scheduled an "interview" with the ATF, and went to their branch in downtown worcester. They asked a lot of questions, I gave a lot of nonincriminating answers, and at one point one of the special agents claimed they had someone who told them I'd sold them a gun and told them it was for profit. My lawyer started trying to negotiate with them, talking about fines, and I decided it was time to end the meeting. And then I didn't hear from anyone for a few months.
I was on a walk at a nature reserve in florida and got an email from my lawyer - the US attorney general's office wanted to know if I would authorize him to receive a subpoena for me. The alternative was likely them trying to hand deliver it to me at home or the shop, which could have made for a few weeks of a great runaround, but wasn't going to actually slow anything down. I approved, they sent it over. They were demanding I send them my business bank records and all emails fitting their criteria. I asked him what I should do (allegations of Clinton deleting emails in response to a similar federal subpoena was all over the news at this point in history), and he said to get everything together and send it to them, and told me that my IOLTA account was running low, suggested I replenish the funds (I’d so far paid a 2500 deposit against billings to get to this point). I accepted at that point that this lawyer was holding my hand on the way to prison and I should hire a competent person.
My new lawyer was the one everyone said I should go with from the start. His deposit against billings was a grand more, but his knowledge and attitude was very worth it. I explained the entire thing to him, he said we shouldn't have done the interview at all and looked over the subpoena with me. He helped me understand exactly what it did and didn't cover. We agree that even though there was a typo in the email they were requesting, we were going to play nicely and not make them resend it. We came up with a plan, we were going to aggressively comply. They got PDFs (so, not searchable, need to be manually converted or read by a person) of every single email I had ever sent or received with the word "gun" "law" and any synonyms of every and all the words keywords they wanted. I truly don't know if I handed over any evidence that could be used against me in a court of law, but they got old arguments with past girlfriends, emails with college professors from years before I'd touched a gun, and an abundance of conversations that never resulted in a sale or purchase. They got almost five thousand files. And then I sent them my bank statements. I was notified by my phone carrier that my texts and call logs had been subpoenaed as well. My attorney reached out to the US district attorney assigned to my case, and opened a channel of communication, and scheduled a time to talk. They got together, and it became apparent that they suspected I had been running an unlicensed gun shop with a computer repair shop as a front, and manufacturing firearms.
So here's where it gets super technical. On July 20, 2016 our state attorney general retroactively reinterpreted the assault weapons ban (first publicly announced via a Boston globe opinion article
https://www.bostonglobe.com/.../eEvOBklTriWcGz.../story.html) which in effect meant that no new AR15 rifles could be sold in Massachusetts, and while the enforcement notice was very vague, the one thing they tried to make clear was that even though it applied to everyone who had legally purchased an AR in the past 18 years they wouldn't enforce that. So, any ARs that were already in Massachusetts were good to stay, as were the unassembled lower receivers, or “lowers”. You know what a car chassis looks like, how it's just the frame and everything else is then attached to it? Or a Custom PC, there’s the case, the one part everything else attaches to. With ARs, that's the lower. It's the part of the rifle that is serialized. Federally, it's a gun, you need to do a 4473 form when buying it from a gun shop. At a state level it's just a federally regulated chunk of metal until you assemble it and it can fire a bullet. But, for someone in Massachusetts to have documentation that it existed there before 7/20/16, they needed it to be transferred to them. Massachusetts has an online portal for person to person transfers (The eFA10 form) but this isn't meant for lowers, so the only way for me to transfer it to them is to do so as if it was already an assembled rifle because it asks things like "barrel length" and "caliber" and you can't leave them blank. So, it unfortunately makes some level of sense that they would think that. They had documentation of more than one receiver being sold to me, no registration of it being assembled, and then a paper trail of a rifle with the same serial being sold by me. To modify a gun for profit, or in a way that changes it's legal definition, it requires a 07 (Manufacturing) FFL (Federal firearms license, permit to profit off the sale of firearms). I obviously did not have one of these.
The good news is that I wasn't actually manufacturing - In fact I have assembled one AR15 in my life and it was quite ironically on July 19th 2016, and I can prove that it was made before the ban because I'm a Facebook whore.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php...
But this was 2016, I had gotten a dodge charger a few months before, and a few months before that purchased my home through owner financing, so they could see a deed transfer but there was no public record of a mortgage. On paper, I looked like I was making and had a lot more money than I did. And, when we met in December, my storefront was being renovated. It was a literal construction zone that week, ceiling panels were off with wires hanging down, walls were plastered but not painted or sanded and there was sawdust everywhere. It certainly didn't look like a legitimate business.
So, I complied, and didn't hear anything for months, again. My lawyer wasn't able to give me updates, just that the USAGs office doesn't confirm if they aren't seeking to prosecute. Summer of 2017, I called the USAGs office. I just googled the name of the person in charge of my case, and called the number that came up - and he picked up. I introduced myself, explained that I was calling because I wanted to know if any charges were being pursued. He told me he'd have to check my file, and would get back to me. Nothing for another few months. Left a voicemail, and sent an email along with it. Get an email from my lawyer, that the USAG can't talk with me directly while I have representation. Nothing for another yearish.
I'm walking off the mat from jiu-jitsu on a Thursday morning in December 2018, and walk up to my phone as it starts ringing, it's my lawyer. I apparently had an arraignment that morning, in Worcester superior court. Shit just got real. They'd sent a notice to my old address, it wasn't a problem that I defaulted (no showed) but I did need to get there quickly. My lawyer assured me that they weren't asking for remand (I wasn't about to be locked up). I get there, thankfully in a change of clothes and not my gi, and they find me a public defender so that I can be read my rights, and I am officially charged with a single count of Unlawful Sale of a Firearm, which can be sentenced of up to a fine of ten thousand dollars and time served of ten years.
Later that day, I'm looking over the paperwork they gave me, and it doesn't have much. It has the charge, and the day of the alleged crime. So, I of course wonder which sale they're charging me for, and identify it. I find the email with the eFA10 form and I remember the guy, it was a shield 40 with a bunch of left handed holsters. But much more importantly - I remember talking with him, and he had mentioned having a shop. I bring this information to my lawyer, and it turns out that the guy had a valid FFL at the date of the sale. He explained to me that this exempts the transaction in question from the law I was accused of breaking, and that he could not legally suggest I agree to a plea deal, because that would be perjury (lying under oath) So, not entirely sure how at that point in time, but it had seemed the state had massively dropped the ball on their prosecution and I’d be lying to plead guilty.
A few weeks later, I get an email from my lawyer. We got discovery back. And this was honestly the most enlightening part of this entire experience. We get to see what the prosecution is bringing to court, to prepare a defense. I find out that this investigation began because a gun shop that used to be in Templeton tried to win brownie points by pointing the ATF in my direction after I haggled with them one too many times. I find out that even though I didn't give them any information, there's still a page and a half report on their meeting with me at the shop saying things like "Mr Webb wasn't surprised when we informed him how many guns he had sold" and "Seems familiar with firearm laws". I absolutely should not have talked with them, and I knew that, but I didn't truly understand. There were three pages of a report from what had been a five minute interview with one of my friends. They had someone saying "I didn't see any computers at the shop". They made it sound like I threatened someone they talked with, by including things like "Mr webb made it known that he was armed" (the person and I had discussed our preferred carry pieces). From Grand jury testimony, I learned about the process, how the FA10 system apparently can't be queried. The special agent testified that he created a spreadsheet to track my sales. It was stated that he couldn't find any correlation between cash deposits and firearm sales. I'd known a few of the people they had talked with, and it seems like a lot was excluded, which apparently is this kinda thing goes.
They were painting a narrative of me as having Hamilton Computer Repairs as a front for a gun running operation. Thankfully, they were wrong. Also thankfully, the Massachusetts prosecutors office seemed to have not done any investigation of their own, they just took the feds investigation, and used it to charge me for selling a fifth firearm through personal transfer. You're only allowed four a year, per MA law, the rest must go through an FFL aka a “dealer transfer”. Thanks to the MA licensing laws and transfer form, I can say with 100% certainty I have never sold a gun to a felon, or anyone who couldn't have bought one at a gun shop instead. Every sale by itself was legal, the quantity however was not. Like with cars, after a certain amount you're supposed to have a dealers license. My lawyer explained that for them to win a trial, the burden of proof would be showing that I sold five firearms, but went further to explain that they would need to get five people to testify that they purchased a firearm from me AND that it was operational (a gun isn't a legally gun if it can't be readily made to fire a bullet) at the time of sale. So, even though they had a list of significantly more than five potential witnesses, finding someone two years later who would take the day off of work and might not have used the thing in the first few minutes adds a complication. My lawyer asks me if I want to play "hide the ball" with them and make them refile, or go to them with our "hey, so you don't have a case, but we can chat". I opted for the latter, let's start nicely and aim for a quick and affordable resolution, if possible.
his start of having issues with the city....from his FB page
The hearing was the only time I’ve worn a tie in the past half decade, and luckily it was far quicker than I expected. The prosecutor started out offering two years, suspended. Which means that I'd plead guilty, and have two years of jail time that I don't have to serve if I don't get charged with anything in the next two years. But a felony on my record. Then my attorney explained the situation to him. They talked with the judge, everyone recognized that while a law was broken, there was no malice or harm, or even deceit. We agreed to $1000 fine, and two years CWOF (continued without a finding) A CWOF verdict means that my case is continued, it remains open. I was on pre-trial probation, and if I was arrested or charged with any crime I would have been immediately held, and the original prosecution would proceed in addition to the current charge. It was done that day.
It's not that I didn't think I would get caught, it's that I didn't think they cared about the law I was breaking. I also never planned to sell this many, I just kept finding new ones I wanted to try, or accessories I wanted to keep, and it was a market I apparently thrived in. I actually had my FFL paperwork filled out, and had begun the conversation with the Worcester police about it. When the ATF knocked on my door that day. I'd been torn about actually applying, since I thought Hillary was going to win, put Healy as her attorney general, and guns were about to get a lot less fun to sell. But I was going to "go legit".
All told, I had sold 117 firearms in roughly 16 months. Between court fees and lawyers, it cost a little under $8k to get to today.
The charge was officially dismissed yesterday.
Morals of the story:
If you're going to break the law, don't brag about it, and definitely don't be an a**h*** about it to the people who are following that law. Just because it’s a victimless crime, and the authorities don’t actively enforce it doesn’t mean it won’t be enforced when it’s brought to their attention.
Hire the right specialized attorney from the beginning.
Watch this video. Seriously. I’ve been saying for about 8 years that it’s how I don’t have a criminal record, and it has just gotten truer. Watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
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www.northeastshooters.com
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