Guilty plea on federal gun charges
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On October 19, 2023, Larry Vickers pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to import and obtain machine guns and other restricted firearms and admitted that he received some of the imported machine guns and other weapons. As detailed in his plea agreement, from June 2018 to March 2021 Vickers, allegedly with cooperation from Sean Reidpath Sullivan and Matthew Jeremy Hall imported machine guns and other restricted firearms under ATF Form 6 by falsely representing them as items for police department demonstration use. At the time, Sullivan was the owner of Trident Rifles in
Gambrills, Maryland and an intelligence analyst for the
Department of Homeland Security, while Hall was chief of police in
Coats, North Carolina.
[10] Vickers retained machine guns and other restricted weapons in his personal collection, knowing the filed forms were fraudulent, and transferred other machine guns and restricted weapons to other
FFLs and third parties.[
citation needed]
Vickers also pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions against
JSC Kalashnikov Concern between July 2014 and March 2021, in the Southern District of Florida. From July 2014 to March 2021 Vickers and 3 co-conspirators were seeking capital investment, technical data, engineering services, firearms, firearm parts, from individuals representing Kalashnikov Concern to "develop a U.S. business that would manufacture Kalashnikov-style firearms to be sold in the U.S. market and fill the gap left by the sanctions against Kalashnikov Concern" named "American Kalashnikov." Vickers had met with Kalashnikov Concern executives in North Carolina and started to receive consulting fees from American Kalashnikov starting from 2014. From July 2015 Vickers and several others provided promotional videography and marketing services valued between $10,000 and $200,000 to Kalashnikov Concern, receiving preferential access to the company's personnel and technical data.
[11]
Vickers faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for conspiracy to violate federal law regulating firearms and a maximum of 20 years in federal prison for conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. U.S. District Judge Julie R. Rubin had not scheduled sentencing for Vickers as of February 2024.
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needs update]
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