Former Lake County Indiana sheriff's officers charged for trafficking in machine guns

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-former-lake-county-coroner-and-sheriffs-officers-to-face-charges-20110922,0,7211597.story

By Andy Grimm

Tribune reporter

5:54 p.m. CDT, September 22, 2011

Federal authorities today announced corruption charges against Lake County, Ind., sheriff’s officers accused of illegally selling machine guns and a former county official who paid himself $25,000 in allegedly improper bonuses from a fund used to hire extra staff to pursue unpaid child support.

Lake County Coroner Thomas Philpot was charged with theft, mail fraud and misappropriation of funds in connection with some $25,000 he paid himself in allegedly improper bonuses while he was serving as county clerk, announced David Capp, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Indiana.

In a separate, six-count indictment, three officers in the Lake County Sheriff’s Department were charged with illegally buying dozens of machine guns and laser sights through the department using forged documents, then reselling the weapons at auctions from 2008 to 2010. The three, Sgt. Joseph Kumstar and officers Ed Kabella and Ron Slusser have agreed to guilty pleas with the U.S attorney and resigned from the department this week.

The indictment states the trio sold 92 laser sights, including several that were found in the home of a Mississippi man who had opened fire on police. They also sold 74 machine guns that were acquired illegally.

[Skidmore]

1. Nothing like creating your own clientele.

[pscot]

2. How could they buy dozens of machine guns

before someone noticed?

[malaise]

3. Just read the link

Clearly they only discovered it after a cop was shot.

reword

[TheWraith]

4. Police agencies are entitled to purchase military surplus automatic weapons.

They buy the "old" weapons that the military is replacing. They're legal for the police to own, even though civilians can't.

[Maine_Nurse]

5. I've read a couple different accounts of this...

and it doesn't really add up to me. The story at http://posttrib.suntimes.com/news/lake/7812932-418/3-lake-county-sheriffs-officers-plead-guilty-to-gun-charges-resign.html states that they were selling the upper receiver assemblies in the $3000 range.

First of all, an HK 416 upper receiver is not a "machine gun" and doesn't make any weapon it is put on a "machine gun". The lower receiver is the part housing the fire control group which is what determines if the weapon is semi or full auto.

Second, if they were selling the whole fully-automatic weapon, the value would have been much much higher than what they were receiving.

Finally, the story stated that after the first unit, they were buying these things with their own money for$1200-$1900 per unit, more like the going price for a semiauto version, definitely not a full auto which would probably be 10-20 times the price.

[TheWraith]

6. Last thing first... that sounds like the right price for a police full-auto.

Since police aren't limited in what full-auto weapons they can buy the way civilians are, there's no scarcity to drive up the price. So a weapon which costs $15,000 for a civilian might cost $1000 for the police.

That said, I would take the press reports with a grain of salt, since reporters are notoriously bad about their facts in anything concerning firearms. That said, it's possible the uppers were of significant value, since they're not available on the civilian market, and they're built on a new piston system from HK which supposedly is more reliable while having less wear on parts. But I suspect that what's really meant is they were selling the lowers and the select-fire sears.