A federal judge sentenced three people from Canton and another man from California for their involvement in a firearms trafficking ring.
United States District Judge Thomas W. Thrasher sentenced Jeffrey Martin Colon Moore, 26, Crystal Davis, 26, Danny Bill Davis, 56, all of Canton, and Alexander Quinn, 36, of Oakland, Calif. March 12 in federal court.
U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said, from January to June 2009, Moore recruited his girlfriend and her wheelchair-bound father, Crystal Davis and Danny Bill Davis, to purchase at least 65 guns. She said Moore went with Davis and her father to 12 federally licensed firearm dealers and at least two guns shows in the Atlanta area where he showed them exactly what guns he wanted to be purchased. Moore reportedly supplied the money needed to purchase the guns.
The firearms then were shipped to California, by way of next-day air service.
“These straw purchasers who helped Moore, a convicted felon, purchase numerous firearms in violation of the law, endangered not only the people of Georgia, but also the people of California, where most of the guns were later shipped and found, some in the hands of criminals,” Yates said. “Several guns Moore sold in this case were recovered in the San Francisco area in the possession of a juvenile, an armed robbery suspect on parole, a convicted felon gang member and drug traffickers and at two shooting crime scenes.”
When one of the federally licensed gun dealers because suspicious of the amount of guns, frequency and nature of the purchases, he contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Yates said.
An ATF investigation revealed Moore had been convicted on a felony car theft charge—and, after determining Moore was a convicted felon, ATF agents conducted an undercover firearm sale to Moore. When he showed up to buy the gun, agents arrested him and discovered he had another gun in his possession, according to Patrick Crosby, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta.
Following Moore’s arrest, agents monitored the delivery of firearms to Vallejo, Calif. and determined that the guns were being shipped to Alexander Quinn, Crosby said.
Quinn was arrested and pleaded guilty to conspiring to unlawfully deal in firearms and to cause firearms to be shipped without notifying the contract carrier. That investigation led to the arrest of four men in Vallejo for unlawfully receiving those firearms. A separate federal case is being prosecuted against those four defendants.
“This proliferating, coast-to-coast firearms trafficking scheme was dismantled, thanks to alert gun dealers and good, old-fashioned police work,” said Special Agent in Charge Gregory Gant of the ATF’s Atlanta Field Division. “When firearms are diverted from retailers and gun shows to the criminal element, violence and death follows all too often. Straw purchasers and traffickers are motivated by nothing more than callous greed. They may not have perpetrated or pulled the trigger in those Bay Area crimes, but they were the ones who placed a gun in the criminal’s hand.”
Moore was sentenced to eight years, one month in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release. He pleaded guilty to the charges on Nov. 20. Crystal Davis and Danny Bill Davis each were sentenced to one year, six months of home confinement, to be followed by three years, six months of probation. She pleaded guilty to the charges on Nov. 17.
Quinn was sentenced to one year and one day in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release. Quinn pleaded guilty to the charges on Nov. 13.
