The Department of Justice arrested five men across Texas, accusing them of illegally purchasing firearms and trafficking them to Mexican drug cartels, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas announced on March 25.
In a superseding indictment on March 6, each of the men arrested was also charged with conspiracy to straw purchase firearms and to smuggle the weapons across the U.S.-Mexico border. Both offenses were established by the 2022 federal Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
Gerardo Rafael Perez Jr., 23, of Laredo, was arrested on March 20 and accused of coordinating the purchase of more than 100 firearms with the intent to smuggle them across the border to Nuevo, Laredo, Mexico, according to court documents.
Francisco Alejandro Benavides, 23; Mark Anthony Trevino Jr, 24; Luis Matias Leal, 30, and Antonio Osiel Casarez, 26, were also arrested on March 20.
Each of the five defendants is charged with one count of conspiracy, with a penalty of up to 15 years, and one count of conspiracy to straw purchase firearms which carries a penalty of up to 25 years.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) authored the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which made straw purchases a federal crime. Straw purchasing is when a person buys a firearm for someone who is prohibited from possessing a gun or someone who doesn’t want his or her name associated with the weapon.
The measure was spurred in part by the massacre at Robb Elementary on May 24, 2022, that left 19 students and two teachers dead in Uvalde, Texas.
The indictment named seven co-defendants who are accused of assisting Mr. Perez with buying and smuggling more than 100 firearms across the border.
Three of the co-defendants, Jose Emigdio Q. Mendoza, Gerardo Antonio Ibarra Jr., and Gerardo Corona, Jr., were initially named in an earlier indictment, according to the release.
Mr. Mendoza was arrested in March 2023, according to the release. Mr. Ibarra and Mr. Corona were arrested in September and October, respectively.
Mr. Perez’s organization allegedly acquired the guns from federally licensed and unlicensed firearms dealers where the straw purchasers, including Mr. Ibarra and Mr. Corona, would make “false representations” to secure the weapons, court documents said.
Mr. Benavides and Mr. Trevino allegedly purchased “military-grade” firearms “from a variety of sources in the Western, Southern, and Northern Districts of Texas” before transporting the guns to Mexico.
“The high-powered firearms allegedly acquired by Perez’s organization included FNH SCAR rifles, Barrett .50 caliber rifles, FNH M294S rifles, and M1919 rifles,” according to the Justice Department.
Mr. Mendoza was accused of selling at least 22 firearms to Mr. Perez and others in his organization between December 2022 and March 2023 without a license. He allegedly received more than $169,000 for the guns he originally bought from licensed dealers.
Messrs. Perez, Casarez, Leal, and Benavides are further charged with one count each of conspiracy to smuggle goods from the U.S. with a penalty of up to five years in prison. They are also facing one count each of conspiracy to possess firearms in promoting a drug trafficking crime, which holds a penalty of up to 20 years imprisonment.
Mr. Perez is charged with two additional firearms trafficking charges.
Messrs. Leal, Benavides, and Trevino are also facing charges of falsifying information when buying a firearm and an additional count of straw purchasing. Each count carries a maximum penalty of 10 years, and all charges carry a fine of up to $250,000.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney William Calve.
