An Indiana man has received a ten-year federal prison sentence for trafficking firearms from Indianapolis to the Chicago area, which included 15 guns ranging from semiautomatic rifles to untraceable “ghost guns.” Devante T. Brown, 29, and his co-defendant Corey Sartin, 21, both from Indianapolis, sold these firearms to undercover law enforcement officers on several occasions in 2022.
The Department of Justice details reveal that undercover officers observed Sartin selling a handgun on April 9. The firearms trafficked included four handguns and AR-style rifles on May 31, and on June 24, additional handguns, rifles, and two “ghost guns” without serial numbers were sold. Text messages showed Brown’s confidence in the illegal transactions, with him stating, “We gone do good business together.”
Brown pleaded guilty to federal firearm charges earlier this year, and Judge Franklin U. Valderrama sentenced him this Tuesday. Sartin, who also pleaded guilty to a similar charge, received a much shorter sentence of two and a half years in prison last year. Morris Pasqual, acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, along with high-ranking officials from various law enforcement agencies, including Christopher Amon of the ATF and Superintendent Larry Snelling of the Chicago Police Department, were acknowledged for their roles in the investigation and apprehension of the traffickers.
The conviction is a result of the Chicago Firearms Trafficking Strike Force’s efforts, a Department of Justice-led initiative aimed at disrupting illegal firearm flows and reducing gun violence. This effort is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a strategy focused on reducing violent crime by prosecuting illegal firearm possession. The strike force’s analyses identify patterns and leads that connect crimes to suspects and trafficking routes. The district’s PSN implementation has focused on tackling violent crime and deterring firearm offenses.
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