I bought a stolen Gun

[Oyeboten]

Lol...

I didn't mean to...won it on 'Gunbroker' six weeks agp...seller is straight as an arrow, good people...been on GB ten years...perfect FB...

Anyway, it was an older S&W Model 10-5 Snubby, nice Revolver, I was happy.

Local FFL received it, and duely saw to the registration and so on.


Six weeks go by, and I get a call from the Metropolitan Police, where, in short, they want to come over and look at the Revolver...but they will not say more than that.


I say "Sure" and we get together.

Nice Cops, very solid and respectful...seemed like definitely intelligent and good people...plain clothes guys, showed me their ID and so on.

Turns out the Revolver's serial Number was flagged in the 'NICS' thing, and, they had a copy of a Police Report from 1997, Florida, 77 year old burglary victim, their Gun...and till now, no one had run it's number or Registered it.


So, I wave Bye-Bye to Mr. S&W, and to the two Policemen.


I will get with the Florida Police or Sherrif on this, just to stay on it's disposition.


If owner is still alive, they'd be 90 now...I hope they are alive and well and in good health, and happy to have their Revolver back..!


I am totally cool with the whole thing, no sense of loss or pout or anything.


First time in my life I ever had a phone call from the Police!


First blush, I thought " Oh hell, is there some old nasty Parking Ticket I never knew about???"


Lol...


Called Seller, filled him in, he's a full fledged FFL. I was not after his doing anything, just wanted him to know so he could see who he'd got it from...but he instantly offered to make good on the dough. Wow, what a cool guy. He thinks this one was of a buch he'd bought from a Police Department sale, Lol. But, he will check his records and find out the details and get back to me.


Funny old World.


If the 1997 owner, or if they have passed on by now, then, their estate, heirs or assigns are not findable, or are indifferent about it's return, I wonder if I could get it back?

 

[W.E.G.]

The seller should offer to refund your money.

You had a contract with him for an item that he represented as having clear title.

The item arrived not as described.

I would expect a refund.

If the original owner is deceased, good luck finding a person with legal authority to authorize you to keep the property that rightly belongs to the estate of the deceased.

Even more good luck convincing the police, who now have custody of the stolen property, that the stolen item should be returned to a person other than the person who reported it stolen.

 

[Oyeboten]

I am in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The Police here are known as 'The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police'.


We'll see...


It's all new territory to me.


Interesting point about 'clear title' and the Seller...I did not know that.


It's been an interesting experience all round so far.

 

[Jolly Rogers]

Even more good luck convincing the police, who now have custody of the stolen property, that the stolen item should be returned to a person other than the person who reported it stolen.
W.E.G. is online now Report Post Quick reply to this message

I may be wrong but it seems to me like they already had a chance to return the gun to the reporting owners...based on the GB sellers thoughts

He thinks this one was of a buch he'd bought from a Police Department sale,

Joe

 

[erichtmobile]

Registration????????? What a damn shame

 

[rmfnla]

So what you are saying is some police department sold a stolen gun?

Sounds to me as if they should be held responsible, both criminally & financially.

After all, the law's the law...

 

[tkopp]

Let's not go crazy rmfnla. Deal with the public enough and you will deal in stolen merchandise.

I'm a pawn broker, and despite my best efforts to screen customers get burned here and there. People can surprise you. Every night our incoming inventory's model numbers, serial numbers, distinguishing features, along with the full details from the seller's ID gets emailed to the police. But they don't have unlimited resources, and it takes some time just to synch their database with our records. Sometimes they get lucky and manage a hit the day after. Sometimes we get a call six months later wondering if maybe we still have x, y, or z?

Just as, so long as we follow those procedures to which we're legally mandated we're not criminally liable for dealing in merchandise we took in good faith, neither would a police department who followed their procedures be criminally liable for reselling a firearm obtained in good faith. Sometimes there's a lag due to staffing. Sometimes systems don't mesh until there's a lawsuit, memo, fine, and then when the reports are compared with transaction history multiple items get simultaneously flagged.

 

[TCOV]

If it came from a police department auction it might be that there has already been a proper disposition of the stolen gun such as unable to contact owner or owner deceased and no contact for heirs and the original stolen gun report was not updated. Interesting to see how this turns out for you. Be sure to check the status of this often so it doesn't just vanish.

 

[wishin]

Glad to hear the seller is being upstanding. He could very well have told you to go pound sand and get a lawyer. Even if the rightful owner is no longer around, I'd be willing to bet you won't get it back.

 

[VA27]

I've even heard of the original owner refusing the gun since he already collected on his insurance. If that's the case, the gun now belongs to the insurance company. Good luck getting it from them.

At any rate, I'd like to know how this all turns out, so keep us posted.

 

[BigO01]

Oyeboten I had basically the exact same thing happen to me a few years back with a wonderful S&W 19 with a 2 1/2 barrel .

Took a full month and I get a call at work from the wife that the County Police had just called and asked for me and left an officers name and # to call him about my gun "We use to have a permit system back then and you had to get them from your local county Police" so I called him and was like you told "he needed to look at my weapon" so of course I made arrangements to meet with him .

Sure enough the gun had been stolen about six months earlier and he had to take it but he gave me a form he filled out that I then took the FFL dealer I had bought the gun from and was given a complete refund .

The dealer told me this has been happening to him about 2-3 times a year since he has been in business for years and his insurance covers his losses .

If your dealer doesn't give you a refund I wouldn't do any more business with him ever again .

 

[sig228]

Something is Fishy Here

The NICS check does NOT include the transmission of the gun's serial number. Its strictly limited to information in connection with the buyer. I'm not quite ready to call BS on this story, but I do not think we are being told all the facts.

 

[VA27]

sig228: Nothing fishy. The gun was transferred legally from one FFL to another. The receiving FFL logs it into his shop. I'm not sure how it works in Vegas, but around here ANY used gun that comes into a shop has the serial number recorded and the local PD drops by once a week and picks up the slips.

The PD then runs the numbers looking for guess what...stolen guns. If one gets a hit, the shop is notified, the gun picked up (or if it has already been sold the new owner is contacted and the gun retrieved. The purchaser goes back to the shop for a full refund and the shop either eats the price or has insurance that covers it.) and returned to the reporting agency.

The person who SOLD the gun to the shop is also interviewed and the trail is followed as far as it can be. Sometimes it's a dead end and sometimes an arrest is made. Happens a lot less often than you'd think it would.

Business as usual. No conspiracies, no black helicopters.

 

[Oyeboten]

When I called the GB Seller yesterday, he mentioned he is out of town and will be home in a week, and, will check his records then to see if his memory is correct, on his thinking the Revolver had been one of a bunch he had bought from a Police Auction.


When he mentioned this, I wondered the same thing - "Was the Revolver in a Police Auction a few months ago because it had already been processed as a found, turned-in, crime-gun, or recovered 'stolen' Gun? - whose owner or estate/heirs could not be found, or who did not want it back if they were found ( and had not collected insurance on it )...but for whatever reason, the whole cycle was now repeating? Where the 1997 Crime Report was not cleared off-the-books in Florida? Or did the Police Department from whom the seller may haver gotten it, when in posession of it, who were auctioning a bunch of Hand Guns, not bother running their numbers? Or all of their numbers?"

Local PD may well run the numbers of transfers my local FFL does, and, six weeks lag time would not be a surprise, if that is how it went. I will ask the Officer who came over ( I have his Card and e-mail cell phone # and so on ) about how e-x-a-c-t-l-y they discovered the situation, just out of my own curiousity.

I had asked him, and he said 'NIC' and also transcribed the 'NIC' Number for me on the back of his Card, along with the 1997 Florida Case Number. ( I will call Florida on Monday ).

Later, I felt confused, since in doing some 'googles', I find 'NICS' - being the abbreviation for the 'National Instant Criminal Background Check System', and 'NIC', is 'National Institute of Corrections', or 'Network Interface Controller'...so, I dunno, Lol.

 

[Kentucky_Rifleman]

No conspiracies, no black helicopters.

God, it's nice to hear some common sense from time to time.

KR

 

[statelineblues]

Similar thing happened to a friend of mine many years ago - he bought a H-D motorcycle at a police auction, got the title, etc. It needed some work so he had it off the road for a few months. Low and behold, he goes to license/register it, and it comes up stolen. Seems it had been confiscated in a raid on a local biker gang, been used by undercover cops in a sting op, then sent to the impound yard were it sat for a couple of years before being put up for auction.

Needless to say, my friend lost the bike and his money....

 

[Wildyams]

that really sucks that you have to go through all this, but it is really nice to see someone who can keep his head on throughout it. Lots of times you see people ranting about stuff like this, even though it gets them nowhere.

I hope it works out for you.

 

[Tinpig]

Congratulations to Oyeboten and the FFL.

Two stand-up guys dealing with an unfair and imperfect world without tantrums or whining.
Ultra High Road!

Tinpig

 

[WoofersInc]

Metropolitan Police,,, what is this? that is UK crap

Nope. Years back the local PD and Sheriffs office combined and Las Vegas and Clark County, Nevada are patrolled by "The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department" We usually just call them "Metro PD" here in town.

http://www.lvmpd.com/

about how e-x-a-c-t-l-y they discovered the situation, just out of my own curiousity.

What happened here is that all handguns in Clark County have to be registered with Metro PD. As a resident of Clark County you have to have what they call a "blue card" showing that the gun is registered. NICS has nothing to do with it. It is Metro that runs the serial numbers on the gun when they regeister it. That is how it showed up in the system. Oyeboten, this is where you got caught up in this. Since you got this from Gunbroker, I am assuming that you had it shipped to an FFL here in town. It was the blue card paperwork that set this off.

Sounds like someone back in Florida didn't clear it out of their system once the gun was recovered. Hopefully Oyeboten will get his gun back, but it is good to see that the seller is stepping up to deal with this..

 

[TexasBill]

Metropolitan Police,,, what is this? that is UK crap

Not at all: in addition to Las Vegas, Nashville and Davidson County did the same thing and the agency is now the Nashville Davidson County Metropolitan Police. Washington, D.C.'s police agency is officially the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia. Metro police agencies also serve Indianapolis, Savannah-Chatham, St. Louis, among others.

 

[Trebor]

I had a similiar thing happen to me a few years ago.

We are required to register handguns in Michigan. I bought a HK P7 from an out of state seller through Gunbroker delivered to my FFL dealer for transfer to me.

I registered the gun no problem. A couple years later I sold it and the new owner registered it no problem. A year or so after that he sold it and when the third owner (in Michigan) tried to register it the gun came up as stolen out of state.

I was contacted because I was the first registered owner in Michigan. I passed along the info and that was that as far as the police were concerned. I did get some hassle from the guy I sold it to as he was getting some flack from the person he sold it to. We eventually worked something out that worked for everbody on that though.

I still wonder how it could have been registered in Michigan twice, which involves running it through the appropriate database each time, yet have it come up stolen on the third registration.

I know that the NCIC database contains incorrect info due to people making errors when they input the info. I've also heard that sometimes a gun will come up as stolen because the serial number matches the serial of a stolen gun, even if that other gun is a different model or manufacturer. I wonder if any of that was in play.

 

[Deanimator]

When I was stationed at Fort Knox in the '80s, I purchased a Colt Official Police from Little Biff's Gun Room in Cosmosdale, KY. A while later, I traded it to Steck & Son in Elizabethown, KY. In the late '80s or early '90s after I moved to Ohio, I got a letter from Steck's via the Army Locator Service. They'd been contacted by the BATF who reported that it had been stolen in California (10?) years previously. The BATF had traced the gun backward from the last owner to Steck's and wanted to know where I'd gotten it. I called Steck's and told them that I'd bought it on a 4473 from Biff's. There was no way the BATF could even pretend I'd done anything wrong and that was the end of that.

 

[BCCL]

Been through a similar case, once bought a cheap Iver Johnson .32 revolver, then 3-4 months later, got a call from the local sheriff's dept., the kid that stole it, (from his step dad) had fessed up to selling it to the gun shop I bought it from and that's how they traced it to me.

Funny thing was, I had been good friends with this kids older brother in grade school.

 

[Oyeboten]

I am looking forward to critically examining the original 1997 Police Report and how clearly the Serial Number is written.

 

[Ala Dan]

I do believe that the officer meant to say NCIC, which is the:

National Criminal Information Center database;
available only to law enforcement~!