NEW YORK – Sixteen members of two separate gun trafficking networks for selling more than 110 illegal firearms, including assault weapons and machine guns, as well as more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition. The joint investigations were led by the NYPD’s Firearms Investigations Unit and the DA’s Office’s Violent Criminal Enterprises Unit. The defendants are charged with multiple counts of Criminal Sale of a Firearm in the First and Second Degrees, Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Second Degree, Conspiracy, and other related charges.

“Gun traffickers are bringing violence to our neighborhoods by selling illegal firearms – they are at the root of the problem of gun violence in this City,” said District Attorney Cyrus Vance. “There have been 127 shooting incidents this year in Manhattan, with 152 victims. Nineteen of those victims were shot to death. Today’s charges speak to the unrelenting commitment by my Office to identify and dismantle the underground networks that give other criminals easy access to handguns, as well as assault weapons and machine guns that are banned in New York state.”

According to documents filed in court and statements made on the record in court, the defendants are charged as members of two separate gun trafficking networks that operated in East Harlem.