Gun importer fired off to prison

1st June 2011

A man who attempted to import semi-automatic weapons from Europe has today been handed an eight-year prison sentence.

Anthony Contos, of Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, thought he was signing for receipt of a parcel containing Beretta and Walther PPK semi-automatic pistols and a total of 19 rounds of live ammunition on 25 November 2010.

In reality, the delivery man was an undercover SOCA officer, and the guns had been replaced with items of equivalent weight.

Sent to Contos by a Jessica Brussler from Buckeberg, Germany, with paperwork claiming it to be DJ Equipment, the package had been intercepted the previous day by customs officers in the city of Leipzig.

German authorities, UK Border Agency and SOCA agreed to allow the package to be transferred to the UK, where it was made safe and taken to Contos’ address on Berkhamsted’s High Street.

Contos was arrested and pleaded guilty in February 2011 to charges of conspiracy to import two self-loading pistols and 19 rounds of ammunition.

Investigation into the sender of the package by German authorities led to “Jessica Bussler” being identified as Rasheed Otofati-Shamsi. He later admitted sending the firearms to Contos, who he had met online.

SOCA’s Nigel Kirby said:

“It was essential that these lethal firearms were prevented from entering the UK criminal market, endangering the public and facilitating a range of illegal activities. The individual attempting to bring them in finds himself looking at a significant prison sentence and a future on SOCA’s radar, and that is what anyone tempted to commit this kind of crime can expect.”

Firearm offences continue to make up a small proportion of recorded crime. Overall, in 2009/10, firearms were used in 0.3 per cent of all police recorded offences, or around three in every thousand offences. This figure falls to just under two in every thousand offences when air weapons are excluded.

More information on firearms crime in England and Wales can be found in the Home Office report: Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2009/10 at www.homeoffice.gov.uk