A 57-year-old Lane County man received more than a three-year federal prison sentence after he admitted to illegally purchasing rifles and ammunition in Oregon, including some found later by the Mexican military in 2014.
Robert Allen Cummins pleaded guilty last year to several counts of conspiracy, making false statements during gun purchases and the unlawful dealing in firearms. Prosecutors alleged Cummins and another man, who has not been captured, purchased high-powered assault rifles for criminal organizations in Mexico. Cummins’ attorney, according to court records, claimed his client got caught up with his excitement about guns and the gun culture.
A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced Cummins to 40 months in prison, plus three years of probation upon his release.
The case started in June 2014 when the Mexican military seized guns, magazines and ammunition, including two .50 caliber rifles, found in a tractor trailer in San Luis Rio de Colorado in the Mexican state of Sonora, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office sentencing memorandum filed Wednesday. Several of the guns had their serial numbers “obliterated” and were found saran-wrapped and hidden in alfalfa bales, according to the court record.
However, the two .50 caliber rifles still showed their serial numbers, and federal agents traced the guns to a purchase made by Cummins in Oregon a month before the Mexican seizure, according to court records.
An undercover Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent later contacted Cummins. According to the court record, Cummins told the agent that he was buying thousands of dollars in weapons, that he was making money as a middle man, and that he generally supported people who do “not want the government to know about their firearm purchases,” according to the court record.
Investigators later learned Cummins paid $38,100 in cash to a federally licensed dealer to buy the .50 caliber rifles and six .308 caliber rifles. He made the purchases with co-defendant Erik Flores Elortegui, who had direct links to Mexico and was involved in grinding off the serial numbers to smuggle the guns south of the border, according to the court record. The investigation revealed other purchases dating back to 2013, worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Cummins, a lifelong resident of Lane County, owns two business: Goshen Auto Sales and Goshen Recycling, according to the sentencing memorandum filed by his attorney last week. Cummins met his co-defendant after a friend sold a firearm to Elortegui at a gun show, according to the memorandum.
“Mr. Cummins became caught up with the novelty of somewhat exotic weapons and ended up selling weapons without the requisite license and made false statements when purchasing the weapons,” according to his attorney’s filing.
After Cummins sold a gun to an undercover ATF agent, the government served a search warrant at his home and later seized $400,000, even though the majority of the money had nothing to do with the gun sales, his attorney wrote in the court record.
His attorney’s memorandum continues, “Mr. Cummins is an almost child-like individual who was excited about guns and the gun culture and never considered the consequences of placing instruments of destruction into the stream of commerce until he was facing the certainty of prison time, the loss of his life savings and the loss of his businesses.”
— Tony Hernandez
thernandez@oregonian.com
503-294-5928
@tonyhreports
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