The biggest case the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) brought against a gun dealer in Project Gunrunner illustrates the obstacles agents face when they try to do something about stores sending guns to Mexico.
It was a case that seemingly had everything in its favor.
Corrupt gun stores usually are hard to catch because law enforcement needs evidence that the stores knowingly sold weapons intended for criminals. In this case, the agents had tons of evidence: surveillance, recorded phone calls, confidential informants and undercover agents posing as straw buyers.
In late 2007, ATF agents busted suspects who told the agents they had purchased hundreds of weapons from a single dealer: George Iknadosian, who owned a Phoenix gun store called X-Caliber.
Agents examined the dealer’s traces and found that 86 guns had been recovered by police in the United States and Mexico between 2005 and 2008. Of those, 47 had been traced from Mexican crime scenes.
The store had sold 710 guns of the types known to be popular with Mexican drug cartels – more than 500 AK-47s and SKS-style rifles, plus one especially lethal .50-caliber Barrett rifle capable of piercing armored vehicles.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix declined to take the case, because it started out with low-level straw-purchaser charges and was going to require a lot of time and resources to develop further. So ATF took the case to the Arizona attorney general, who worked on it for more than a year with the Phoenix Police Department.
Iknadosian instructed undercover agents posing as straw purchasers about how to sneak weapons across the border, advising them to cross on weekends and Fridays when border agents might be off fishing.
“When you guys buy them (guns), I run the paperwork, you’re OK, you’re gone,” he said. “On my end, I don’t give a crap.”
Iknadosian was charged with violations of state fraud, forgery, racketeering and money laundering laws.
“This was an amazingly well-prepared case,” said Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard. “The evidence was all there. There is no question what was going on.”
But in March 2009, a state judge, Robert Gottsfield, dismissed the case before it went to the jury.
“The judge’s decision was inscrutable,” Goddard said. “It was a real shock to our office.”
Iknadosian’s attorney, Thomas Baker, said he showed on cross-examination that ATF’s informants were not credible.
“The ATF and Terry Goddard decided to give every single one of them probation if they would testify against George,” Baker said. He said the conversations with Iknadosian were “out of context.”
In an interview, Gottsfield defended his decision, which he said was one of the few times in 30 years he had dismissed a case before it went to a jury.
He agreed that there was ample evidence against Iknadosian, but he called the case “overcharged.”
“There certainly was evidence that Iknadosian was selling to people who were not buying the guns for themselves, and that’s a class-one misdemeanor,” Gottsfield said.
About guns going to Mexico from the United States, the judge said: “It is a terrible problem. They have to do something about it.”
