DENVER — A federal jury has found Katherine O’Neal, a former U.S. Army soldier stationed at Fort Carson, guilty of smuggling 11 firearms from Colorado to the Dominican Republic in a brazen international export scheme. The verdict, delivered March 6, 2018, in U.S. District Court, marks a critical win for federal prosecutors battling illegal arms trafficking across U.S. borders.
O’Neal was convicted under 18 U.S.C. § 554(a), which criminalizes the smuggling of goods from the United States. The charges stem from a June 2015 trip when she boarded a flight from Denver to the Dominican Republic with 11 handguns packed in her luggage. Though she declared the weapons to the airline, she failed to secure the mandatory export license from the U.S. State Department — a fatal oversight that triggered the investigation.
Her plan unraveled when airline staff misdirected her bags, delaying their arrival in the Dominican Republic. When the luggage finally arrived, Dominican authorities discovered the firearms during a routine inspection. O’Neal was arrested upon arrival at the airport to retrieve her belongings. The Dominican Republic bans all imported firearms, making the seizure an automatic violation of national law.
At trial before U.S. District Judge William J. Martinez, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado presented evidence of multiple trips O’Neal made to the Caribbean nation following bulk firearm purchases in Denver and Colorado Springs. Despite the damning evidence, the jury acquitted her on additional counts involving false statements on purchase forms and money laundering.
The case was jointly investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and Dominican Republic authorities. Extradition proceedings are pending in the Dominican Republic, where O’Neal faces separate criminal charges.
Katherine O’Neal is scheduled for sentencing in August 2018 in the case United States of America v. Katherine O’Neal, Case No. 15-cr-0353-WJM. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Robert Brown and Kurt Bohn are prosecuting. For more information, visit http://www.justice.gov/usao/co or follow @DCoNews on Twitter.
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Key Facts
- State: Colorado
- Agency: DOJ USAO
- Category: Weapons
- Source: Official Source ↗
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