Federal agent in Tucson gun-smuggling case: Every family member had a .50 cal
By Curt Prendergast Arizona Daily Star Jul 8, 2017 Updated 1 hr ago
A foiled gun-smuggling attempt in Nogales, Arizona, and a daring raid at an airstrip in Sinaloa, Mexico, led U.S. authorities to a gun shop on Tucson’s northwest side.
Along the way, federal agents encountered rifles powerful enough to take down a helicopter, two phony home invasions, dozens of fraudulent gun sale records, and a former Tucson police officer accused of stealing the identities of people he arrested as part of a scheme to smuggle guns across the border.
Joe Santiago Valles, a Tucson police officer from 2012 to 2014, was sentenced July 6 in U.S. District Court in Tucson to 6½ years in federal prison after pleading guilty to 30 counts of falsifying federal firearm records, identity theft and witness tampering. The prosecution of alleged co-conspirator Timothy Veninga, who was a federally licensed firearms dealer, is ongoing.
The investigation of Valles, 34, and Veninga, 48, began in March 2016 when U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Nogales caught a man trying to smuggle a Kel-Tec PMR-30 pistol into Mexico, according to court documents and testimony at the July 6 sentencing hearing.
More:
http://tucson.com/news/local/agent-every-family-member-had-a-cal-in-smuggling-scheme/article_adbb32f9-11d6-5693-9702-e6b876b5c2e2.html
Out of curiosity, looked for a photo of a .50 cal:
