Stupidest smuggler ring busted
Reuters reports that former staff sergeant Joseph Debose, supposedly a member of a National Guard Special Forces unit, pleaded guilty to charges of trying to smuggle 13 weapons to China in North Carolina yesterday;
According to court documents, Debose provided multiple shipments of firearms to co-conspirators who then hid the weapons in packages and transported them to shipping companies to be sent to customers in China.
“In blatant disregard for everything he was sworn to uphold, the defendant placed numerous firearms into a black market pipeline from the United States to China,” said Loretta Lynch, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
First of all, why would 13 weapons in China be so important to risk arrest? There are 1.3 billion people in China, that’s one weapon for every hundred million people.
The scheme came to light when local law enforcement officials in China seized a package containing firearms concealed in speaker casings, court records show. The weapons, whose serial numbers had been defaced, had been sent from Queens, New York, and were later traced back to Debose, according to the complaint.
OK, so he was trying to arm a group of rebels which makes more sense, but, I’ve heard from people who’ve been to China that you can feel eyes on you everywhere while you’re there, so how did he think he wouldn’t be caught?
And to the journalist who wrote the piece, guns aren’t people, so you really can’t use the phrase “The weapons, whose serial numbers had been defaced…”
Category: Shitbags
I read this to my husband, who replied, “He should have been working for the Justice Department…then he would have been fine.”
#1 Eleos.
You owe me a keyboard.
Hot coffee out the nose!
Jonn, you’re going to have to apologize to the reporter. Turns out these weapons were not inanimate objects. That’s why there were only 13 of them. They were very, very special. Each had a name, and all were sentient and fluent in both Mandarin and English. As a matter of fact, I hear, in order to keep the lid on this, the hidden-in-speakers tale is just a cover. The real skinny–perhaps uncovered by the reporter (ergo, the inadvertent use of whose, is that two of the weapons got into an argument and fired themselves at each other. That’s how they were actually discovered. There, don’t you feel a bit red-faced, now?
Are those weapons actually secret squirrels?
Oh sh*t … I hope they don’t find the Kapock life jackets I have smuggled to Chad! They were concealed in large boxes of thermal underwear.
@5. Not to worry. The radio headsets I sent there last year got through in a crate marked “EARMUFFS.”
@ 6 … thanks .. I am in the clear!
So, the most important question is, was he Special Forces qualified, or non-SF Guard soldier attached to the unit?
I understood that the Chinese became suspicious when they discovered the KH on the speakers referred to Heckler and Koch, not Harman Kardon
#8 Tmnan… Asking the same question I was… was he? Or a hanger-on/never went to the course?
Beretverde, Tman: does it particularly matter? In either case, he had to be a first-class DUMBASS to have tried this in the first place.
In English, we frequently personify inanimate objects. If you object to ‘whose’, what usage would you suggest?
Why smuggle guns into China, when they already build their own? Wouldn’t it just be easier for rebels to steal them? This really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
@12. Here are two easy ones:
“The serial numbers on the weapons had been defaced…”
“The weapons, with serial numbers defaced,…”
Hondo- yes it does… just like Jeffery McDonald and all of the others. When you have to put in SF in an article (gives the story an “oomph factor”) I would like to see the record to be clearer. Dumbass move… ABSODAMNLUTELY!
Beretverde: I understand your POV. But in terms of public perception, I’m not sure it does matter all that much. I’m afraid the SF community is going to get a black eye either way on this one, deserved or not.
If this idiot was assigned to a SF unit, as with MacDonald that’s all the public will remember. They won’t understand the distinction that he was non-SF qualified support vice an SF-qualified person – and they won’t care. All they’ll hear is the “SF” part.
That’s not fair, but I’m not sure what we can do about that. The US public doesn’t exactly grasp complex concepts and fine distinctions all that easily. Hell, some in the military themselves have to have the distinction explained to them.
For the record: I’m also hoping this guy wasn’t a qualified operator, but for a different reason. I’d hate to think someone this damn stupid (or with such piss-poor judgement) made it through SFQC and onto an ODA. Without even touching on the integrity aspect, the chances for success were just too low – and you know he didn’t get enough $$$ for 13 weapons to make it worth that kind of risk.
@ #2
0:)
That was supposed to be a smiley with a halo…looks a bit squished.