Queens mall and playground ghost gun operation shut down
Authorities dismantled a ghost gun operation, shutting down a Midwest-to-Long Island pipeline that transported deadly weapons sold in Queens at a mall and playground, officials said Wednesday.
Five people were charged in connection with a trafficking enterprise that sold dozens of 3-D printed ghost guns, assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and ammunition.
“When gun traffickers flood neighborhoods with untraceable firearms, they fuel violence that tears communities apart,” state Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “This investigation successfully stopped a dangerous gun trafficking operation by removing dozens of ghost guns and assault weapons from our streets.”
Investigators recovered 86 firearms, including 55 ghost guns and 25 assault weapons, along with 90 high-capacity magazines and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Officials said the gun runners sold the weapons at various locations, including the Louis C. Moser Playground in Jackson Heights on a weekday afternoon and in the parking lot of the popular Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst.
Two of the suspects also used an Elmhurst garage to store ghost guns and high-capacity magazines, officials said. Some of the weapons were hidden inside a guitar case in the garage.
Officials said Mateo Castro-Agudelo, 21, one of the suspects, used the guitar case to transport the weapons to customers.
Castro-Agudelo allegedly made at least one of the firearms sales outside a Jackson Heights smoke shop where he worked. He also posted pictures of these guns on social media accounts, authorities said.
investigators began tracking Castro-Agudelo and his associates, Satveer Saini, 20, Hargeny Fernandez-Gonzalez, 20, Adam Youssef Senhaji-Rivas, 20, and Milanjit Sidhu, 20, in late 2023, according to the attorney general’s office.
During the investigation, Saini, Fernandez-Gonzalez, and Senhaji-Rivas allegedly paid more than $27,000 to purchase firearms in Indiana, which has less restrictive gun laws than New York.
During one gun run, Saini and Castro-Agudelo drove from Indianapolis to Queens with weapons purchased in Indiana when they were stopped in Ohio for speeding by state cops who recovered nine unloaded serialized handguns from inside their rental car, authorities say.
After that, Fernandez-Gonzalez began paying Sidhu to drive the weapons from Indianapolis to Queens, officials said.
“They allegedly displayed sheer disregard for the public’s safety, and placed their own selfish gain above all else,” said Ivan Arvelo, Homeland Security Investigations’ New York special agent in charge.
Members of the crew were charged with criminal sale of a firearm and criminal possession of a firearm, which are both felonies.
They each face a maximum of 25 years in prison if convicted.
