Firearms Stolen from Natchez, Mississippi, Pawn Shop Illegally Shipped to United Kingdom
Jackson, Miss. - Maurice Taylor, 33, of Vicksburg, Mississippi, pled guilty today, before Senior U.S. District Court Judge Tom S. Lee, to conspiracy to violate the Arms Export Control Act and to being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, announced U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst, Special Agent in Charge Dana Nichols with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and Special Agent in Charge Jere T. Miles with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations in New Orleans.
Maurice Taylor carried out a scheme in which he shipped stolen firearms from Mississippi to a co-conspirator in London, England. He prepared two separate packages containing stolen firearms concealed within children’s toys, and mailed the packages to London, in violation of the Arms Export Control Act. DNA evidence confirmed that Taylor, who is a convicted felon, was one of the people who handled the firearms. The firearms had been stolen days earlier during a burglary of a pawn shop in Natchez, Mississippi. Taylor texted with his co-conspirator messages and photographs of the guns he would mail, and received back from London confirmation numbers for wired payments for the guns, through a mobile phone application. After the London Metropolitan Police arrested Taylor’s partner, the LMP seized his phone and several firearms from his car. Evidence of the communications and the electronic payments were retrieved from the co-conspirator’s phone.
Taylor also pled guilty being a convicted felon in possession of firearms. He has prior felony convictions for burglary and grand larceny in Sharkey County, Mississippi. Taylor will be sentenced on July 11, 2019, by Judge Lee, and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison as to the Conspiracy charge and ten years in prison as to the charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Taylor stands to receive up to a $250,000.00 fine for each charge.
This case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Homeland Security Investigations, and the London Metropolitan Police Service. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Theodore M. Cooperstein and Charles W. Kirkham.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
