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Feds in Miami charge seven with illegally selling
Josey1
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Feds in Miami charge seven with illegally selling firearms
By Brian Bandell
Associated Press Writer
MIAMI - Federal authorities charged six people and one corporation with illegally selling guns and said some of the sales were tied to specific crimes in South Florida.
One store, the Cash Inn in Miami, sold 28 guns in 2000 that were later involved in crimes, said U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis.
Irfan Hazoor, a sales clerk at Cash Inn, was charged with selling firearms to a felon, lying about gun sales and selling firearms without the proper paper work.
The five-month operation was led by four undercover agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, along with help from two confidential informants.
Authorities examined gun purchases in the Miami area and pinpointed stores that sold an unusually high number of cheap handguns or sold guns that were later traced to crimes.
An undercover agent would enter the gun shop with a felon and the felon would ask to buy a weapon, according to prosecutor John Blakey. In the cases of the stores that were charged, the felon would end up with the gun by having someone else's name on the paper work, which is illegal.
"Operation Blue Steel" uncovered the illegal sale of 17 different firearms at four stores.
Lewis said other stores were investigated in the investigation but weren't charged with a crime. Other stores are still under investigation.
George "Jorge" Carbonell, a manager at Eagle Arms & Collectibles in Miami, and Jorge Soler, a sales clerk, and Chris Perrotta, a sales clerk at R.T. Money Tree Pawn Shop in Miami, were all charged with lying about gun sales and filing illegal records of gun sales. In one case, Perrotta sold a pistol without completing any transaction form, according to Lewis.
La Turquesa Inc., which operates La Turquesa Pawn Shop in Miami, manager Sandra Elias and sales clerk Sandor Elias were also charged with illegals sales.
The indictments against all the defendants handed up on Thursday. They were arrested on Saturday and Sunday.
Each count holds a maximum sentence of five years in jail and a $250,000 fine. The company would face a maximum of five years probation and a $500,000 fine.
The U.S. attorney's office didn't know Monday if the individuals had hired lawyers.
None of the four stores have been closed down or had their federal license to sell firearms revoked, but the ATF is considering such action, said Lewis.
"These gun shops give a black eye to all legitimate firearms dealers," said ATF agent Hugo Barrera.
Lewis said the operation was an effort to send a stern message to gun dealers who sell illegally.
"The gun shop agents in South Florida need to know that their next purchase may be by an undercover ATF or Miami-Dade Police agent," said Lewis.
http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/apnews/stories/072902/D7L2NOMO0.html
Copyright 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
By Brian Bandell
Associated Press Writer
MIAMI - Federal authorities charged six people and one corporation with illegally selling guns and said some of the sales were tied to specific crimes in South Florida.
One store, the Cash Inn in Miami, sold 28 guns in 2000 that were later involved in crimes, said U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis.
Irfan Hazoor, a sales clerk at Cash Inn, was charged with selling firearms to a felon, lying about gun sales and selling firearms without the proper paper work.
The five-month operation was led by four undercover agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, along with help from two confidential informants.
Authorities examined gun purchases in the Miami area and pinpointed stores that sold an unusually high number of cheap handguns or sold guns that were later traced to crimes.
An undercover agent would enter the gun shop with a felon and the felon would ask to buy a weapon, according to prosecutor John Blakey. In the cases of the stores that were charged, the felon would end up with the gun by having someone else's name on the paper work, which is illegal.
"Operation Blue Steel" uncovered the illegal sale of 17 different firearms at four stores.
Lewis said other stores were investigated in the investigation but weren't charged with a crime. Other stores are still under investigation.
George "Jorge" Carbonell, a manager at Eagle Arms & Collectibles in Miami, and Jorge Soler, a sales clerk, and Chris Perrotta, a sales clerk at R.T. Money Tree Pawn Shop in Miami, were all charged with lying about gun sales and filing illegal records of gun sales. In one case, Perrotta sold a pistol without completing any transaction form, according to Lewis.
La Turquesa Inc., which operates La Turquesa Pawn Shop in Miami, manager Sandra Elias and sales clerk Sandor Elias were also charged with illegals sales.
The indictments against all the defendants handed up on Thursday. They were arrested on Saturday and Sunday.
Each count holds a maximum sentence of five years in jail and a $250,000 fine. The company would face a maximum of five years probation and a $500,000 fine.
The U.S. attorney's office didn't know Monday if the individuals had hired lawyers.
None of the four stores have been closed down or had their federal license to sell firearms revoked, but the ATF is considering such action, said Lewis.
"These gun shops give a black eye to all legitimate firearms dealers," said ATF agent Hugo Barrera.
Lewis said the operation was an effort to send a stern message to gun dealers who sell illegally.
"The gun shop agents in South Florida need to know that their next purchase may be by an undercover ATF or Miami-Dade Police agent," said Lewis.
http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/apnews/stories/072902/D7L2NOMO0.html
Copyright 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
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BOSTON (AP) - The $400 that Joseph Salvati borrowed on the street ended up costing almost 30 years of his life.
He defied thugs with baseball bats who came to collect it for their partner, mob hit man Joseph "The Animal" Barboza. When Barboza became a government witness, he fingered Salvati as an accessory to a gang murder - out of revenge.
For more than 30 years, the FBI hid memos showing that other men, including an informant it wanted to protect, were the real killers.
Salvati and three others were sentenced to finish their days in prison for a crime that, from the start, the FBI had evidence they did not commit.
"At the beginning, I was mad - I was real mad," Salvati, now 69, said in a recent interview.
Salvati, a truck driver and father of four from Boston's Italian North End, tried to accept what he thought he could not change.
"You try to put it out of your mind as much as possible," he says. "You do your time one day at a time."
And so he did - almost 11,000 of them. But he kept gently proclaiming his innocence until his sentence was finally commuted in 1997 after evidence of the FBI's misconduct surfaced in a mob case.
Two of the others who were wrongly convicted died in prison, and the fourth was released just last year.
Even now, Salvati's wife, Marie, sobs when she talks about what her family went through. "I feel like I never healed from it," she said.
She and the children, who were ages 4 to 11 when their father was sent away, did time, too, in their own ways.
Each week, Salvati and his wife exchanged greeting cards. She kept his on the television set, always at hand.
One day, he hinted that she should leave him, move on with her life. "She said, 'For better or for worse - that's it,'" he remembers.
At school, classmates mocked the children of a convict. But they visited their father regularly with their mother, always asking when he could come home.
Then, one day, they stopped asking. That hurt Salvati more than the questions.
These days, he hopes for an FBI apology and mulls a lawsuit against the government.
"The bottom line is: They just don't care," he says.
Others who were wrongly jailed or who were victimized by crimes committed by FBI informants have already sued, their claims against the government exceeding $1 billion. For some, it is too late.
Louis Greco, father of two and decorated World War II combat veteran, was wrongly convicted with Salvati. A former Army boxer, he had crossed the same mobster-turned-witness by chasing him from a neighborhood where he was collecting loansharking debts, says Greco's lawyer, John Cavicchi.
Greco's wife divorced him - she says at his urging - and remarried. He took to gardening in the prison yard, grew old, developed diabetes, had a leg amputated and suffered a stroke.
"His main thing was he didn't want to die in jail," says his ex-wife, Roberta Werner.
He did in 1995, just before the scandal was exposed. His lawyer can only ask for a posthumous pardon.
Citing criminal and civil liability, FBI headquarters declined to comment on past wrongdoing in the informant program. But Louis Freeh, then FBI director, publicly admitted in 1999 to "significant mistakes."
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u_pg=54&u_sid=460071
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
"Not as deep as a well, or as wide as a church door, but it is enough."