Woman pleads guilty in Fast and Furious case

[LilOlLady]

Woman pleads guilty in Fast and Furious case
By The Associated Press
June 22, 2012
She faces up to five years in prison.

Ireland admitted that she accompanied an alleged ring member in 2010 to a gun shop for a buy, carried $18,000 in her purse for the purchase and knew that the alleged ring member lied when making the purchase.

Twelve people in the alleged 20-member ring have pleaded guilty.


Woman pleads guilty in Fast and Furious case | Arizona Capitol Times

GUNS are going to continure to walk across the border without of Fast and Furious.

 

[waltky]

Ole!...

Mexico makes an arrest over Fast and Furious killing
Sun, Sep 09, 2012 - Mexican federal police announced on Friday that they have arrested a suspect in the killing of US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, the slaying at the center of the scandal over the botched US gun-smuggling probe known as Operation Fast and Furious.

Jesus Leonel Sanchez Meza is one of the five men charged with killing Terry in December 2010 during a shootout in Arizona. One is on trial in the US state and the other three remain fugitives. Sanchez was arrested on Thursday in Mexico’s Sonora State. Two guns found at the scene were bought by a member of a gun-smuggling ring that was being monitored in the Fast and Furious investigation.

In the operation and at least three earlier probes during the administration of former US president George W. Bush, agents in Arizona employed a risky tactic called gun-walking — allowing low-level “straw” buyers in gun-trafficking networks to leave with weapons purchased at gun shops. The goal was to track the guns to major weapons traffickers. During Operation Fast and Furious, many of the weapons were not tracked and wound up at crime scenes in Mexico and the US, including the Terry shooting.

In July, US authorities made a rare disclosure linked to the botched gun-smuggling probe, revealing identities and seeking the public’s help in catching the fugitives accused in Terry’s shooting. The release of the suspects’ identities in an unsealed indictment came with the offer of a US$1 million reward for information leading to their capture. The FBI said it was seeking information related to Jesus Rosario Favela-Astorga, 31, Ivan Soto-Barraza, 34, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, 34, and a man identified as Lionel Portillo-Meza, which Mexican police said was an alias of the man arrested on Thursday.

Mexico makes an arrest over Fast and Furious killing - Taipei Times

See also:

Man arrested in death of U.S. border agent
Sept. 8 (UPI) -- A man has been arrested in the killing of a U.S. border agent whose death led to the uncovering of a controversial gun-tracking operation, Mexican police say.

The Ministry of Public Safety announced Friday that Leonel Sanchez Jesus Meza had been arrested about 60 miles south of the Arizona border in the town of Puerto Penasco, CNN reported. Meza is accused of killing Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in a firefight Dec. 14, 2010, in Arizona near the border of Mexico.

Investigators looking into Terry's killing uncovered Operation Fast and Furious, a plan by the Justice Department to allow guns to be smuggled into Mexico in order to catch drug smugglers and smash their operations.

Meza is awaiting extradition to the United States. He is one of five people indicted in Terry's death and the second person to be arrested. Three other individuals are believed to be at large in Mexico.

Source

 

[Mad Scientist]

Woman pleads guilty in Fast and Furious case
By The Associated Press
June 22, 2012
She faces up to five years in prison.

Ireland admitted that she accompanied an alleged ring member in 2010 to a gun shop for a buy, carried $18,000 in her purse for the purchase and knew that the alleged ring member lied when making the purchase.

Twelve people in the alleged 20-member ring have pleaded guilty.


Woman pleads guilty in Fast and Furious case | Arizona Capitol Times

GUNS are going to continure to walk across the border without of Fast and Furious.

What are you talking about? She got caught and the weapon(s) never made it over the border.

 

[whitehall]

Wait a minute, wasn't that the government's idea to allow an informant to purchase illegal weapons so that they could track them to alleged drug cartels? I smell a rat in this little scenario. The Ireland babe might be going down to cover the Attorney General's ass.

 

[waltky]

Univision drops 'Fast and Furious' bombshell...

Fast and Furious Scandal: New Details Emerge on How the U.S. Government Armed Mexican Drug Cartels
Sept. 30, 2012 - Report connects operation to murders of 16 Mexican teens

On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college students in Villas de Salvarcar, Ciudad Juarez. Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more were wounded before the hit men finally fled. Indirectly, the United States government played a role in the massacre by supplying some of the firearms used by the cartel murderers. Three of the high caliber weapons fired that night in Villas de Salvarcar were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), according to a Mexican army document obtained exclusively by Univision News.

Univision News identified a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious, and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings, and at least one other massacre. As part of Operation Fast and Furious, ATF allowed 1,961 guns to "walk" out of the U.S. in an effort to identify the high profile cartel leaders who received them. The agency eventually lost track of the weapons, and they often ended up in the hands of Mexican hit men , including those who ordered and carried out the attack on Salvarcar and El Aliviane, a rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez where 18 young men were killed on September 2, 2009.

In Mexico, the timing of the operation coincided with an upsurge of violence in the war among the country's strongest cartels. In 2009, the northern Mexican states served as a battlefield for the Sinaloa and Juarez drug trafficking organizations, and as expansion territory for the increasingly powerful Zetas. According to documents obtained by Univision News, from October of that year to the end of 2010, nearly 175 weapons from Operation Fast and Furious inadvertently armed the various warring factions across northern Mexico. "Many weapons cross the border and enter Mexico, but that [Fast and Furious] number, quantity and type of weapons had quite an impact in the war in this area" Jose Wall, an ATF agent stationed in Tijuana from 2009 to 2011, told Univision News.

Following the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry at the hands of Mexican bandits on December 14, 2010, media and Congressional investigations prompted hearings. On September 20, the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General report, which opened the door for sanctions of 14 ATF and DOJ officials. In Washington, the Fast and Furious scandal became politicized, diverting the attention from the human cost in Mexico to political battles on Capitol Hill. In June, a vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt ignored the real tragedy in Mexico. "Americans are not often moved by the pain of those outside [their country]…" Javier Sicilia, a Mexican poet whose son was killed in the midst of the violence, told Univision News. "But they are moved by the pain of their own. Well, turn around and watch the massacres."

MORE

 

[waltky]

Now it'll all come out in civil court...

Brian Terry family sues officials over Fast and Furious
12/14/12 — The family of a slain Border Patrol agent has sued federal officials over the botched "Fast and Furious" gun operation.

Agent Brian Terry was mortally wounded on Dec. 14, 2010, in a firefight north of the Arizona-Mexico border between border agents and five men who had sneaked into the country to rob marijuana smugglers.

Two assault rifles acquired by a straw buyer for the gun smuggling ring targeted in the "Fast and Furious" operation were found in the aftermath of the shootout near Nogales.

Federal authorities conducting "Fast and Furious" have faced tough criticism for allowing suspected straw gun buyers for the ring to walk away from gun shops in Arizona with weapons, rather than arrest them and seize weapons.

The investigation was launched in 2009 to catch trafficking kingpins, but agents lost track of about 1,400 of the more than 2,000 weapons involved.

Source

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says, "Psst - fall onna ground an' bump yer head an' claim ya gotta concussion...

Pistol purchased by ATF agent found at alleged cartel crime scene in Mexico
December 19, 2012, CBS News has learned that two guns found in the area of a recent Mexican drug cartel shootout have been linked to Fast and Furious: One trafficked by a suspect in the case, and the other purchased by a federal agent.

Mexican beauty queen Susana Flores Maria Gamez and four others died in the brutal gun battle between Sinaloa cartel members and the Mexican military in November. CBS News has learned that an FN Herstal pistol recovered near the crime scene in November was originally purchased by an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) manager who was faulted by the Inspector General in Operation Fast and Furious: George Gillett. Gillett was the Asst. Special Agent in Charge of ATF Phoenix when Fast and Furious began. The Herstal pistol is nicknamed a "cop-killer" because of its designation as a "weapon of choice" for Mexican drug cartels. CBS News has learned the Inspector General planned to question Gillett today after a hastily-opened inquiry to determine how this agent's personal weapon got into the hands of suspected cartel members.

CBS News spoke to Gillett, who is still employed at ATF. Gillett acknowledged he once owned the weapon in question, but says he sold it in Phoenix sometime last year after advertising it on the Internet. He declined to provide the name of the man who bought it, but says he went "above and beyond" what was required by law to complete the firearms transaction. That included asking the purchaser to fill out a form giving personal information and stating that he was in the U.S. legally; and checking his driver's license, which Gillett said was issued in the U.S. "I didn't do anything criminal," said Gillett, who calls himself a gun enthusiast. "I've been a gun collector all my life."

He told CBS News that he ran into financial difficulties in recent years and sold some of his firearms. Gillett says the Herstal pistol may have sold for approximately $1,100. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote a letter (PDF) to the Inspector General late today asking for an urgent investigation. Grassley included records from three of Gillett's gun purchases, so-called Form 4473's, and says that Gillett appears to have provided false information on them. "Lying on a Form 4473 is a felony and can be punished by up to five years in prison," Grassley's letter states. The senator also points out that's the same alleged violation that suspects in ATF's Fast and Furious operation were arrested for. "Jaime Avila, Jr. recently plead guilty to a variety of charges" in Fast and Furious, including "for giving a false address on Form 4473."

Form 4473's require purchasers to list their current residential address. Gillett's gun purchase forms incorrectly list the local ATF Phoenix office and a shopping plaza as his personal residence, according to Grassley's letter. Gillett did not comment on allegations about the address on the forms. In a related development, as CBS News reported yesterday, another weapon recovered in the same area after the shootout in which the beauty queen was killed, had been trafficked by Fast and Furious suspect Uriel Patino.

Source