A Barrett .50 caliber rifle is displayed during a news conference at the Homeland Security Investigations Miami Field Office (HSI), Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2022, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky). Inset: Webb County Sheriff booking photos for Gerardo Rafael Perez Jr. and Antonio Osiel Casarez, two of several defendants accused of engaging in a conspiracy to traffic guns such as the Barret .50 caliber.
Federal prosecutors have arrested group of men who allegedly engaged in a sprawling conspiracy to traffic high-powered military-grade rifles from points all over Texas before smuggling them over the border to drug cartels eager to use them in battles over power and territory.
On Monday, the Justice Department announced it had arrested five men in the Lone Star State on a number of gun trafficking charges. On March 20, they arrested accused conspiracy leader Gerardo Rafael Perez Jr., the group’s alleged money man Luis Matias Leal, known to his compatriots as “Wicho,” “Poncho” or sometimes “El Tio”; Francisco “Frankie” Alejandro Benavides, Mark Anthony Trevino Jr., and alleged smuggler Antonio Osiel Casarez.
The men were added to an existing indictment on March 6, court records show, where co-defendants and alleged straw-purchasers and/or smugglers Jose Emigdio Q. Mendoza, Gerardo Antonio Ibarra Jr. and Gerardo Corona, Jr. Mendoza, were already facing a raft of felony charges.
Prosecutors allege the conspiracy started in late June 2022 when Perez Jr. began steadily acquiring the guns and then arranging for them to be sent over the border to a cartel in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico.
Perez, along with Ibarra Jr., Corona Jr., Benavides and Trevino Jr., are accused of coordinating sales from sources dotting all parts of Texas, including from unlicensed firearm dealers Mendoza.
When forced to fill out paperwork for licensed dealers, they would lie on forms, according to the 17-page second superseding indictment and when dealing with private sellers, forms still required to be completed under existing Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives rules went ignored. No background checks were done either, prosecutors said.
The rifles spanned from Barret .50 caliber firearms to military grade automatic FNH SCAR rifles as well as .30 caliber machine guns known as M1919s and semi-automatic military grade FNH M294S rifles. Some guns could fetch upward of $8,000 individually.
And, the indictment states, “all of which are highly prized by Mexican drug trafficking cartels for their firepower and battlefield reliability.”
“They are symbols of cartel profit, power and prestige due to their high price and purchase to operate,” prosecutors said, underlining how crucial the guns are for territory battles.
Some of the defendants also allegedly purchased devices known as “belt-fed upper receivers,” or valuable pieces of equipment that allow greater and continuous loading of ammunition.
Mendoza is accused of selling firearms as an unlicensed dealer, contacting defendants Perez, Ibarra and Corona to set up the sales of at least 22 firearms from December 2022 to last March. Prosecutors allege Mendoza collected a cool $169,000 in that deal alone.
Later, in January 2023, he is accused of selling at least one of the Barret .50 caliber rifles in Temple, Texas, for a little under $14,000. Highly lucrative gun deals like this unfolded time and again throughout Texas and prosecutors say Mendoza repeatedly lied about who the guns were meant for or where they were really going. The indictment notes that even when he was turned away for suspicious activity from licensed firearms dealers in San Antonio, for example, he waited a just few weeks and picked up a gun in a different city and before allegedly selling them off for tens of thousands of dollars.
Mendoza was arrested last March along with Ibarra and Corona.
All of the defendants arrested on March 20 were under 30 years old, the youngest defendant being just 23. They face serious jail time if convicted; conspiracy to traffic firearms charges carry a penalty of up to 15 years in prison and conspiracy to straw purchase guns carries a maximum sentence of 25 years.
It is unclear whether the new alleged conspirators have retained an attorney.
The Laredo Morning Times reported last September that Perez Jr. and Casarez were arrested that month following a traffic stop. Police had reported discovering two military grade rifles in a vehicle and noted that Casarez was already a convicted felon.
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