How a defaced handgun and 2 shell casings led to an international gun smuggling ring

By Mark Morales, CNN

(CNN) — Two years ago this month, police investigating a kidnapping at a home in Montreal, Canada, found a Glock pistol with a defaced serial number that had been legally purchased in New Hampshire, court documents show.

Ultimately, that single handgun and two subsequently recovered shell casings traced by US authorities gave law enforcement just enough to bring down an international gun trafficking ring, using a relatively new partnership that allows sophisticated intelligence sharing to stop gun violence in Canada, authorities said.

Investigators used advanced tracing techniques to restore the serial number on the Glock 26 recovered in August 2024 and eventually charged 13 defendants as part of an alleged conspiracy that funneled the guns from New Hampshire and into Canada via Indigenous land in upstate New York. At least five defendants have pleaded guilty to federal firearms related charges, according to the US Department of Justice.

One of the defendants in the scheme used jet skis to stash the guns on an island on the St. Lawrence River, where the weapons would be picked up and brought to Canada, according to a detention memo for one defendant.

The major bust was part of an emerging trend with illegal firearms found in Canada: As many as half the crime guns recovered in Canada were smuggled from the US, according to statistics from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

To stop this, Canadian authorities have partnered with the ATF to use advanced tracing technology in hopes of generating leads, authorities said. That partnership has already had a ripple effect, identifying targets who would have otherwise been undetected and resulting in indictments, like the case involving the 13 defendants.

“We’re able to zero in on the violent crime at its source,” Thomas Greco, ATF special agent in charge of the Boston Field Division, told CNN. “So many of these guns are sourced from the United States, so it’s our responsibility and our duty and our job to go and zero in on that source and make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

“And then, in the future, we’re building a database and we’re building knowledge, so if these things start to show up and lead back to the same area and the same actors and the same people, we’re ready for it. It’s proactive as much as it is reactive.”

Gun tracing at heart of partnership

The partnership between the ATF and Canadian law enforcement started in 2023, where crime gun intelligence tools – such as ballistic analysis that can ultimately trace shell casings to guns and the shooters – are shared in real time with various law enforcement agencies.

Since the expansion into the province of Quebec in 2023, for instance, gun traces went from 100 to 200 a year to now 4,500 per year, ATF statistics show. Across Canada, the ATF facilitates roughly 15,000 trace requests, statistics show.

Gun tracing has become particularly helpful as authorities continue to recover illegal firearms. Canadian authorities identify between 17,000 and 20,000 illegal firearms per year, according to statistics. Of those illegal guns, anywhere between 44% and 50% of those are smuggled into Canada from the US, statistics show.

In major Canadian cities, anywhere from 78% to as much as 90% of crime guns recovered came from or were smuggled in from the United States, the ATF says.

Tracing allows authorities to finally get the full picture of illegal guns in Canada, Greco said.

“It’s not necessarily an uptick in activity. It’s an increase in the tracing of these firearms,” Greco said. “The activity was always there. It’s just now we have so many more resources dedicated to tracking it. So, since 2023 the number of guns that we’ve traced has increased, which has allowed us to build a much wider knowledge base about who’s buying these guns, who’s trafficking them, and where they’re coming from.”

While gun violence isn’t as prevalent in Canada as it is in the US, recent statistics paint a picture of how much of a foothold illegal firearm use has on the country.

Police services in Canada reported a 4.2% drop in firearm related violent crimes from 2023 to 2024 – its steepest drop in 10 years, according to data compiled by Canada’s central statistical agency. Despite the drop, firearm-related crime was still 44% higher in 2024 than it was in 2014, the statistics show.

The rise in those firearm-related crimes was driven by specific offenses, which included discharging a firearm with intent, using a firearm in the commission of an offense, and pointing a firearm, the stats show. These crimes doubled from 2014 to 2024 with one category, discharging a firearm, having more than tripled during that time, the stats show.

There have been several recent high-profile violent incidents where firearms were the main driver.

Two people were killed and several others injured when two shooters opened fire at Canada’s largest street festival in Toronto in July.

One police officer was killed and another person injured when a gunman opened fire in a Montreal neighborhood in June, officials said.

A woman opened fire inside a school and killed eight people while injuring dozens more in a Canadian mountain town in February. Five students between 12 and 13 years old were killed in what officials called the worst school shooting in decades.

“Instead of it being isolated to street gangs, now we’re seeing the organized crime groups that are operating across different types of criminal activities, being fairly brazen with their gun crimes,” said Trishann Pascal, executive director and national lead for combatting gun smuggling with the Canada Border Services Agency. “Mass shootings still are not the norm, but organized criminal groups using firearms, sourcing firearms, that’s definitely something that I’d say is on the rise and definitely a public concern here.”

Weapons smuggled through island

It’s firearms tracing – like in the case involving the defaced handgun and and two subsequently recovered shell casings – that has helped to combat gun violence, authorities said.

Members of the Montreal City Police Department found the weapon, a Glock 26, on August 30, 2024, when officers raided a home in relation to a kidnapping investigation, court records show. Investigators were able to trace the gun to a legal purchase in Keene, New Hampshire, made by one of the straw purchasers of the scheme, according to the detention memo.

About a week later, Akwesasne Mohawk police provided US authorities shell casings stemming from an arrest on Indigenous land in Quebec where a suspect had fired their gun on July 22, 2024, according to the memo. One of those shell casings was entered into the ATF’s National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN), which compares shell casings and other evidence and connects them to shootings involving the same firearm. The data showed a match with that suspect, according to court records.

Around a week later, the suspect was driving a car in New York near the Canadian border when he was spotted by local police and fled, eventually ditching the 2007 Toyota Camry they were driving, the memo says. Police found another shell casing in the vehicle which was entered into NIBIN and matched up with the kidnapping investigation being done by the Montreal City Police Department, according to the memo.

The alleged conspiracy, which federal investigators say ran from July 2021, was detected because of this sophisticated gun tracing technology sharing between the US and Canada, law enforcement officials announced at a news conference in May.

The plan called for using Akwesasne land to cross between the US and Canada, according to court records. One of the defendants charged in the scheme even used jet skis to smuggle guns from the New York side of Akwesasne territory to nearby Cornwall Island, where the weapons would then be ferried the rest of the way into Canada, according to court records.

Investigators said several of the firearms had been recovered at various Canadian crime scenes and were in the hands of members or suspected members of organized crime.

To better protect Indigenous land from illegal activity like gun smuggling, local police are dedicating more boots on the ground and leaning heavily into technology, like drones and a tip line, in addition to the partnership between US and Canadian authorities, which includes tracing, intelligence and even jurisdictional reach.

“All you can do is attempt to use the resources that are out there,” said Matthew Roark, chief of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Police, noting that securing the border is not the responsibility of his agency alone and it’s also on the community to report suspicious activity. The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe governs the Akwesasne community.

“If you believe in your own people and you can get the community to support it, those organized crime groups will go elsewhere,” Roark said.

Just days before law enforcement in New Hampshire announced the gun smuggling indictment in May, federal authorities in New York arrested and charged three men for allegedly trying to smuggle 89 firearms – including 17 that were reported stolen – into Canada. The cache of weapons was found inside the vehicle they were driving, with the majority of guns packed in a large suitcase and some tucked into the back seat, according to federal law enforcement in New York.

Bryan DiGirolamo, special agent in charge of ATF New York, told CNN the more guns are traced, the more crimes between the US and Canada can be linked, ultimately exposing trafficking rings. It’s partnerships, not just in Canada but at local agencies across New York State, that DiGirolamo said make the difference.

“We forge those relationships, especially along the border, as we see a rise in guns going up north, and we’re seeing that rise because we’re intercepting them, some of them by chance and some of them by analyzing our data,” DiGirolamo said. “We’re able to connect crimes and identify criminal networks earlier than we ever had before.”

And while law enforcement continues to battle gun traffickers, the nature of the business is still lucrative enough to inspire some to take the chance.

One of the co-conspirators indicted in the New Hampshire to Canada pipeline case told investigators he believed selling firearms was good money and would earn him more money than his regular job as a mechanic, according to court records. Prosecutors said one defendant attempted to sell five firearms for at least $3,000 each and traffic them through the island, according to the detention memo.

“You can get a Glock from anywhere from $350 to $500, let’s say retail price, and … the markup, depending on time or whatever, is very good,” acting chief for the ATF’s international affairs, Jackie Cunningham, told CNN. If a smuggler manages to get multiple guns across the border, “that’s something that makes it very advantageous for the (gun trafficking) networks to be able to do that.”

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