WILMINGTON, N.C. – In a brazen scheme, a U.S. Army Major was found guilty of smuggling guns to Ghana hidden inside blue barrels of rice and household goods, a federal jury ruled in the Eastern District of North Carolina.
Kojo Owusu Dartey, 42, faces a maximum penalty of 240 months when sentenced on July 23, 2024, for dealing in firearms without a license, delivering firearms without notice to the carrier, smuggling goods from the United States, illegally exporting firearms without a license, making false statements made to an agency of the United States, making false declarations before the court, and conspiracy.
The investigation, a result of a partnership between law enforcement agencies across the globe, exposed international criminals and exposed the international arms trafficking scheme. U.S. Attorney Michael Easley praised the Ghana Revenue Authority and the International Cooperation Unit Office of the Attorney-General of Ghana for their assistance in the investigation.
“Far from being a victimless crime, firearms trafficking threatens public safety across our nation and beyond,” said Toni M. Crosby, Special Agent in Charge of the ATF Baltimore Field Division. “The Baltimore Field Division is proud to partner with the Ghana Revenue Authority and ATF’s Charlotte and Louisville Field Divisions for this investigation, which has kept firearms off the streets — preventing them from being used in any number of killings and other crimes — and ended this international firearm trafficking scheme.”
According to court records and evidence presented at trial, between June 28 and July 2, 2021, Dartey purchased seven firearms in the Fort Liberty area and tasked a U.S. Army Staff Sergeant at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to purchase three firearms there and send them to Dartey in North Carolina. Dartey then hid all the firearms, including multiple handguns, an AR15, 50-round magazines, suppressors, and a combat shotgun inside blue barrels underneath rice and household goods and smuggled the barrels out of the Port of Baltimore, Maryland, on a container ship to the Port of Tema in Ghana.
The Ghana Revenue Authority recovered the firearms and reported the seizure to the DEA attaché in Ghana and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Baltimore Field Division. At the same time, Dartey was a witness in the trial of U.S. v. Agyapong, a case that involved a 16-defendant marriage fraud scheme between soldiers on Fort Liberty and foreign nationals from Ghana that Dartey had tipped off officials to. In preparation for the trial, Dartey lied to federal law enforcement about his sexual relationship with a defense witness and lied on the stand and under oath about the relationship.
Michael Easley, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, made the announcement after Chief U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers II accepted the verdict. The ATF, Army Criminal Investigation Division and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Export Enforcement investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Gabriel J. Diaz prosecuted it with technical assistance from David Ryan, DOJ Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.
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Key Facts
- State: North Carolina
- Agency: DOJ USAO
- Category: Weapons|Violent Crime
- Source: Official Source ↗
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