Students major in running guns
Buy arms cheap in Dixie to sell on city streets
By PATRICE O'SHAUGHNESSY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Richard Rasheen Waldburg left Jamaica, Queens, to study business at Georgia Southern University and quickly learned a lucrative, illegal lesson in marketing: The ready supply of cheap guns down South filled the demand for weapons on his hometown streets.
He was part of a group of three students at the Statesboro, Ga.-based university who brought at least 45 guns to New York, authorities say, and a member of a growing fraternity of college gunrunners.
Men and women who escaped the city's bullet-ridden neighborhoods to attend college in the Deep South have brought hundreds of cheap firearms back to New York for sale to thugs who have used them in burglaries, an attempted home invasion robbery and other crimes.
In less than two years, authorities say, some 800 guns were transported to the city by students with no prior criminal records who bought the weapons in Georgia, Alabama, Texas and other states.
The alarming trend was uncovered in the last six months.
One student from Oakwood College in Huntsville, Ala., took orders for 9-mm. and .380 semiautomatics for Bronx gun peddlers. Another Oakwood student drove a car with a trunkload of guns around East Flatbush, Brooklyn, looking for customers.
Followed by agents
Another case involves 39 guns trafficked by a student from Brooklyn who attends Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta. Agents tailed the man from a pawnshop where he bought 16 guns, to the campus, where he left the weapons in his car while he rushed to take an exam before heading north. Agents seized the guns.
"These types of cases may have been going on in the past, but not to the extent that we have uncovered recently," said Edgar Domenech, special agent in charge of the New York office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
"The patterns we've seen developing, where New York City residents enrolled in colleges and universities across America are buying guns and bringing them back to New York, must be addressed and stopped right now."
So far, 40 of the weapons have turned up in crimes here. Most had their serial numbers scratched off, but new technology retrieved the digits, and the guns could be traced.
Retired NYPD ballistics detective Antonio Colon now works for the bureau, restoring scratched-off digits on guns used in crimes. Of the 621 defaced guns recovered in the city so far this year, Colon has been able to raise 416 complete numbers and 171 partial numbers.
Authorities believe they will link scores more of the defaced guns recovered from the city's crime scenes to students on leafy Southern campuses.
The transplanted New Yorkers quickly saw how profitable it could be, spending $100 on a gun that could fetch $600 here.
"I think the real rub is guys from the hood, the first couple of times they buy one, two or three guns, then realize how easy it is, and they get a business going," said supervisory agent Billy Fredericks of the Joint Firearms Task Force run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the NYPD.
The students told investigators they bought guns with money from tuition or student loans.
The task force has six cases pending, and several investigations in early stages involving New York and New Jersey students who attend Southern and Midwestern colleges. The tally of guns they brought to the metropolitan area since early 2001 could top 1,000, agents said.
Deadly package
The probes began in March, when a United Parcel Service worker in Huntsville discovered seven defaced guns in a package addressed to a home in Canarsie, Brooklyn.
The serial numbers were raised, and the firearms were traced back to Sean Gage, 27, originally from Canarsie, and David Cassimy, 22, of Valley Stream, L.I. They were attending Oakwood College, a Seventh Day Adventist school in the bucolic Tennessee Valley.
"I needed book money," was Gage's excuse, according to NYPD Sgt. Charles Giglio of the task force.
At one point, Gage allegedly drove around East Flatbush with a car trunk full of firearms, openly soliciting customers, agents said.
When confronted by investigators last spring, Gage and Cassimy "were worried if they'd be able to graduate," said Detective Peter Shanhai.
Gage, Cassimy and a third student were indicted in August in Alabama on federal trafficking charges for purchasing 71 firearms and bringing them to three Brooklyn men who resold them on the streets. So far five have turned up on suspects arrested throughout the city.
There was a second set of gunrunners at Oakwood. A Bronx man known as "John Doe" in court papers because he has not been charged yet, allegedly bought 79 guns and removed the serial numbers with an engraving tool. His alleged accomplice, Kenneth Benson, 23, an Alabama man, purchased 55 guns. Of the 134 that ended up here, 17 have been recovered so far.
"John Doe" allegedly bought guns for two New York men, Brian Williams and Dwayne Fryfield, who were arrested on Sept. 9 and charged with firearms dealing.
One of the guns was used by a gang plotting a home invasion robbery in Coney Island in May, another in a suicide in Long Island City in June, and one was used by a burglar on the upper East side in October.
Balloon bursts
The Oakwood groups "knew each other but worked separately," said bureau Special Agent Cameron Conklin.
He said "John Doe" is still in school, but Benson graduated in the spring with an accounting degree. When Conklin went to arrest Benson in May, there were balloons with messages of congratulations, and graduation gifts in his apartment.
"They're not hardened street thugs doing this," said Conklin. "Most are young, clean-cut, decent kids. They're taking student loans, gambling that if they buy guns cheap they can flip them quickly to get a lot of money."
The Oakwood defendants bought all the guns from licensed federal firearms dealer James Longshore, who sold them out of a 5-by-5-foot shed in the rear of his home in Hazel Green, Ala. He advertised his business in the Oakwood school paper, Shanhai said.
"It's really problematic," said Fredericks. "I think we'll get more cases out of Huntsville."
Meanwhile, other defaced guns were turning up here, and when the serial numbers were traced, they pointed to more college students.
Hubert Edwards, 25, of Brownsville, Brooklyn, a student at Texas Southern University in Houston, allegedly enlisted three fellow students who lived in the area to act as straw purchasers. The three, Tyrone Osby, Kylan Savage and Reginald Joiner, bought at least 53 guns, which Edwards drove to his old neighborhood.
Eight of the guns have been recovered so far in Brooklyn. Special Agent Howard Stern said one, a Bryco 9-mm., made a remarkably quick time-to-crime trip. It was bought in Houston on July 1, and wound up in the hands of a 15-year-old youth in Canarsie, Brooklyn, on July 7.
The youth told cops he had bought it from another teen, who had purchased it July 4, allegedly from Edwards in an apartment where 20 shiny new guns - with serial numbers removed - were displayed in factory boxes.
Edwards and the other three Texas Southern University students were indicted Sept. 19 by a Brooklyn federal grand jury.
"Students must be made aware of the consequences of buying guns for someone else," Domenech said. "They don't think they'll get caught, but restoring defaced serial numbers has been a crucial step in our investigations."
Dangerous trend
The ATF plans a campaign in conjunction with the federal Department of Education, using the slogan "Don't Lie for the Other Guy" to discourage collegiate gunrunning.
But the trend shows no signs of abating as long as some states have lax gun laws.
Georgia, which does not restrict the number of firearms in a single purchase, has been dubbed "the iron pipeline" because so many guns flow from there.
Atlanta bureau Supervisory Agent David Fields said it's been a perennial problem: Students in Georgia fueling the black market of weapons in their hometowns.
"But if you're from a market area like New York, the temptation is greater," Fields said. "We're seeing more of them more frequently now."
Georgia Southern student Waldburg, 24, had lived in the Peach State for more than 90 days, had no criminal record and a Georgia identification card. He quickly passed background checks at the local pawnshop. He bought one gun in January, then went back and bought nine more in February, according to Fields. Two of his co-students who live in Georgia allegedly bought 35 firearms.
Waldburg's January purchase, a HiPoint 9-mm. pistol, was recovered June 15 in Brooklyn, agents said.
Waldburg didn't foresee that a defaced gun could be traced right back to him. He pleaded guilty in June in Atlanta to firearms trafficking. He was expelled and is awaiting sentencing, Fields said.
"In their minds these students are just doing it for the money, they don't think about the consequences," said Shanhai.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/22601p-21422c.html
I'm surprised this wasn't front page at jointogether.org .......
Buy arms cheap in Dixie to sell on city streets
By PATRICE O'SHAUGHNESSY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Richard Rasheen Waldburg left Jamaica, Queens, to study business at Georgia Southern University and quickly learned a lucrative, illegal lesson in marketing: The ready supply of cheap guns down South filled the demand for weapons on his hometown streets.
He was part of a group of three students at the Statesboro, Ga.-based university who brought at least 45 guns to New York, authorities say, and a member of a growing fraternity of college gunrunners.
Men and women who escaped the city's bullet-ridden neighborhoods to attend college in the Deep South have brought hundreds of cheap firearms back to New York for sale to thugs who have used them in burglaries, an attempted home invasion robbery and other crimes.
In less than two years, authorities say, some 800 guns were transported to the city by students with no prior criminal records who bought the weapons in Georgia, Alabama, Texas and other states.
The alarming trend was uncovered in the last six months.
One student from Oakwood College in Huntsville, Ala., took orders for 9-mm. and .380 semiautomatics for Bronx gun peddlers. Another Oakwood student drove a car with a trunkload of guns around East Flatbush, Brooklyn, looking for customers.
Followed by agents
Another case involves 39 guns trafficked by a student from Brooklyn who attends Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta. Agents tailed the man from a pawnshop where he bought 16 guns, to the campus, where he left the weapons in his car while he rushed to take an exam before heading north. Agents seized the guns.
"These types of cases may have been going on in the past, but not to the extent that we have uncovered recently," said Edgar Domenech, special agent in charge of the New York office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
"The patterns we've seen developing, where New York City residents enrolled in colleges and universities across America are buying guns and bringing them back to New York, must be addressed and stopped right now."
So far, 40 of the weapons have turned up in crimes here. Most had their serial numbers scratched off, but new technology retrieved the digits, and the guns could be traced.
Retired NYPD ballistics detective Antonio Colon now works for the bureau, restoring scratched-off digits on guns used in crimes. Of the 621 defaced guns recovered in the city so far this year, Colon has been able to raise 416 complete numbers and 171 partial numbers.
Authorities believe they will link scores more of the defaced guns recovered from the city's crime scenes to students on leafy Southern campuses.
The transplanted New Yorkers quickly saw how profitable it could be, spending $100 on a gun that could fetch $600 here.
"I think the real rub is guys from the hood, the first couple of times they buy one, two or three guns, then realize how easy it is, and they get a business going," said supervisory agent Billy Fredericks of the Joint Firearms Task Force run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the NYPD.
The students told investigators they bought guns with money from tuition or student loans.
The task force has six cases pending, and several investigations in early stages involving New York and New Jersey students who attend Southern and Midwestern colleges. The tally of guns they brought to the metropolitan area since early 2001 could top 1,000, agents said.
Deadly package
The probes began in March, when a United Parcel Service worker in Huntsville discovered seven defaced guns in a package addressed to a home in Canarsie, Brooklyn.
The serial numbers were raised, and the firearms were traced back to Sean Gage, 27, originally from Canarsie, and David Cassimy, 22, of Valley Stream, L.I. They were attending Oakwood College, a Seventh Day Adventist school in the bucolic Tennessee Valley.
"I needed book money," was Gage's excuse, according to NYPD Sgt. Charles Giglio of the task force.
At one point, Gage allegedly drove around East Flatbush with a car trunk full of firearms, openly soliciting customers, agents said.
When confronted by investigators last spring, Gage and Cassimy "were worried if they'd be able to graduate," said Detective Peter Shanhai.
Gage, Cassimy and a third student were indicted in August in Alabama on federal trafficking charges for purchasing 71 firearms and bringing them to three Brooklyn men who resold them on the streets. So far five have turned up on suspects arrested throughout the city.
There was a second set of gunrunners at Oakwood. A Bronx man known as "John Doe" in court papers because he has not been charged yet, allegedly bought 79 guns and removed the serial numbers with an engraving tool. His alleged accomplice, Kenneth Benson, 23, an Alabama man, purchased 55 guns. Of the 134 that ended up here, 17 have been recovered so far.
"John Doe" allegedly bought guns for two New York men, Brian Williams and Dwayne Fryfield, who were arrested on Sept. 9 and charged with firearms dealing.
One of the guns was used by a gang plotting a home invasion robbery in Coney Island in May, another in a suicide in Long Island City in June, and one was used by a burglar on the upper East side in October.
Balloon bursts
The Oakwood groups "knew each other but worked separately," said bureau Special Agent Cameron Conklin.
He said "John Doe" is still in school, but Benson graduated in the spring with an accounting degree. When Conklin went to arrest Benson in May, there were balloons with messages of congratulations, and graduation gifts in his apartment.
"They're not hardened street thugs doing this," said Conklin. "Most are young, clean-cut, decent kids. They're taking student loans, gambling that if they buy guns cheap they can flip them quickly to get a lot of money."
The Oakwood defendants bought all the guns from licensed federal firearms dealer James Longshore, who sold them out of a 5-by-5-foot shed in the rear of his home in Hazel Green, Ala. He advertised his business in the Oakwood school paper, Shanhai said.
"It's really problematic," said Fredericks. "I think we'll get more cases out of Huntsville."
Meanwhile, other defaced guns were turning up here, and when the serial numbers were traced, they pointed to more college students.
Hubert Edwards, 25, of Brownsville, Brooklyn, a student at Texas Southern University in Houston, allegedly enlisted three fellow students who lived in the area to act as straw purchasers. The three, Tyrone Osby, Kylan Savage and Reginald Joiner, bought at least 53 guns, which Edwards drove to his old neighborhood.
Eight of the guns have been recovered so far in Brooklyn. Special Agent Howard Stern said one, a Bryco 9-mm., made a remarkably quick time-to-crime trip. It was bought in Houston on July 1, and wound up in the hands of a 15-year-old youth in Canarsie, Brooklyn, on July 7.
The youth told cops he had bought it from another teen, who had purchased it July 4, allegedly from Edwards in an apartment where 20 shiny new guns - with serial numbers removed - were displayed in factory boxes.
Edwards and the other three Texas Southern University students were indicted Sept. 19 by a Brooklyn federal grand jury.
"Students must be made aware of the consequences of buying guns for someone else," Domenech said. "They don't think they'll get caught, but restoring defaced serial numbers has been a crucial step in our investigations."
Dangerous trend
The ATF plans a campaign in conjunction with the federal Department of Education, using the slogan "Don't Lie for the Other Guy" to discourage collegiate gunrunning.
But the trend shows no signs of abating as long as some states have lax gun laws.
Georgia, which does not restrict the number of firearms in a single purchase, has been dubbed "the iron pipeline" because so many guns flow from there.
Atlanta bureau Supervisory Agent David Fields said it's been a perennial problem: Students in Georgia fueling the black market of weapons in their hometowns.
"But if you're from a market area like New York, the temptation is greater," Fields said. "We're seeing more of them more frequently now."
Georgia Southern student Waldburg, 24, had lived in the Peach State for more than 90 days, had no criminal record and a Georgia identification card. He quickly passed background checks at the local pawnshop. He bought one gun in January, then went back and bought nine more in February, according to Fields. Two of his co-students who live in Georgia allegedly bought 35 firearms.
Waldburg's January purchase, a HiPoint 9-mm. pistol, was recovered June 15 in Brooklyn, agents said.
Waldburg didn't foresee that a defaced gun could be traced right back to him. He pleaded guilty in June in Atlanta to firearms trafficking. He was expelled and is awaiting sentencing, Fields said.
"In their minds these students are just doing it for the money, they don't think about the consequences," said Shanhai.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/22601p-21422c.html
I'm surprised this wasn't front page at jointogether.org .......
