CORALVILLE, IA – A brazen scheme to illegally amass a personal arsenal has landed 36-year-old Ken Nakato of Coralville in federal prison. Nakato was sentenced on April 11, 2024, to 100 months’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to one count of possession of a firearm by a felon. The case reveals a calculated effort by Nakato to exploit trust and deceive acquaintances to obtain weapons he was legally prohibited from owning.
The unraveling of Nakato’s operation began on May 17, 2023, when Hiawatha police responded to a domestic disturbance. During the incident, officers discovered seven firearms in Nakato’s possession, triggering a background check that revealed his prior felony conviction. Nakato initially lied about his criminal history, but the firearms were seized. But that wasn’t enough to stop him. He continued his scheme, claiming to be an employee of the ATF – a claim he texted to associates to bolster its credibility.
Just days later, on May 23, 2023, Nakato spun a fabricated story to an acquaintance, claiming he needed to “seize” their firearms as part of his supposed ATF duties. He successfully conned the individual into handing over seven more firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Law enforcement quickly recovered these stolen weapons on May 24 and 25, 2023, but Nakato’s hunger for firearms didn’t abate.
On June 7, 2023, Nakato further escalated his deception by convincing a family member to purchase two additional firearms for him from a licensed dealer in Coralville. He was found in possession of one of these firearms during a traffic stop by Iowa City police on June 15, 2023. The cumulative evidence demonstrated that Nakato possessed at least twenty firearms between May 17, 2023, and June 15, 2023 – a staggering number for a convicted felon.
The sentencing was handed down by United States District Court Chief Judge C.J. Williams in Cedar Rapids. In addition to the 100-month prison sentence, Nakato will serve a three-year term of supervised release upon his release. There is no parole in the federal system, meaning Nakato will serve the entirety of his sentence. He is currently in the custody of the United States Marshals Service awaiting transfer to a designated federal facility.
This case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Kyndra Lundquist and was a collaborative effort between the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Hiawatha Police Department, the Iowa State Patrol, the Coralville Police Department, and the Iowa City Police Department. The investigation was conducted as part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program aimed at reducing violent crime and gun violence across the nation. The case file number is 23-CR-0048, and further information can be found at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.
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