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This is a round from a Barrett .50-caliber rifle.
(U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives)
A pair of Oregon men have been charged in a plot to illegally buy and sell military-style firearms and smuggle them to Mexico, U.S. prosecutors announced Tuesday.
A federal grand jury handed up an indictment Sept. 16 in Eugene that accuses the men - Beaverton resident Erik Flores Elortegui, 33, and Robert Allen Cummins, a 56-year-old resident of Eugene - of making false statements to acquire firearms and conspiring to smuggle them out of the country, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for Oregon.
"The indictment is the result of a year-long investigation and international collaboration that began after a large shipment of firearms was found in Sonora, Mexico," government prosecutors wrote in a news release.
The two men are accused of making straw purchases of more than $70,000 worth of semiautomatic firearms, including .50-caliber Barrett rifles and other military rifles in the style of the AK-47, some of which were recovered in Mexico soon after purchase, prosecutors wrote.
Elortegui and Cummins allegedly made false statements to acquire at least 61 firearms and partial firearms that they intended to smuggle out of Oregon intended for Mexican drug cartels, according to the charges.
"Transnational criminal organizations operating in Mexico rely upon the use of firearms to protect their supply of drugs, supply routes, profits and distribution territory form both law enforcement agents and other criminal organizations," according to the opening words of the indictment.
The document noted that Mexico's drug cartels present a "ready and lucrative market" for firearms, with "weapons of choice" ranging from rifles of .50-caliber, 7.62mm and .308-caliber to .38-caliber handguns.
Those weapons can't be purchased through regular commercial channels in Mexico. So firearms traffickers commonly buy guns in U.S. shops and mark them up in price before putting them in the hands of drug dealers below the border, prosecutors noted in the charges.
The weapons were purchased illegally in 2013 and 2014, the government alleges.
On May 15, 2014, Cummins picked up a cache of firearms from Adaptive Firing Solutions in Oregon City for which he had previously paid $38,000, the government alleges. On the same day, according to the indictment, Elortegui bought a Dremel grinding tool at the Home Depot in Hillsboro.
There is no indication from the government documents that Adaptive Firing Solutions was aware that the weapons were purchased as part of an alleged criminal plot to buy and sell them illegally.
Four days later, Elortegui headed south, bedding down for the night at a Quality Inn in Calexico, California. The next day, according to the indictment, he bought more gear commonly used to grind serial numbers from guns and crossed the border into Mexicali, Mexico.
Less than two months later, on July 8, 2014, two firearms he allegedly carried - both .50-caliber Barrett rifles - turned up in Sonora, Mexico, along with other firearms with obliterated serial numbers, the indictment alleges.
"Those who illegally deal and smuggle firearms share responsibility for the violence those firearms promote," Acting U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams noted in the government's news release.
-- Bryan Denson
503-294-7614; @Bryan_Denson