BOISE - Roy Ulysses Benitez, 26, of Nampa, was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court to 36 months in prison for possessing an unregistered firearm, U.S. Attorney Bart M. Davis announced. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill also placed Benitez on supervised release for three years after he is released from prison. Benitez was indicted by a federal grand jury in Boise on Dec. 12, 2017. He was found guilty of the crime after a three-day jury trial in December 2018.
According to court records, on July 26, 2017, Benitez sold firearms to a confidential informant working for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. One of the firearms was a sawed off shotgun with a barrel length of less than 16 inches. Under federal law, it is illegal to possess certain firearms, like sawed off shotguns, unless the firearm is registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. Benitez had not registered the sawed off shotgun in that record.
The case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
This case was prosecuted as part of the Department of Justice’s Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) program. PSN is the centerpiece of the Department of Justice’s violent crime reduction efforts. PSN is an evidence-based program proven to be effective at reducing violent crime. Through PSN, a broad spectrum of stakeholders work together to identify the most pressing violent crime problems in the community and develop comprehensive solutions to address them. As part of this strategy, PSN focuses enforcement efforts on the most violent offenders and partners with locally based prevention and reentry programs for lasting reductions in crime.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
