Operation Wide Receiver led to Fast and Furious
The U.S. Government became an arms dealer in what was dubbed Fast and Furious. The operation failed miserably with 2000 weapons ending in the arms of criminals, some to be found in crime aftermaths years later.
The little known precursor to Fast and Furious was Operation Wide Receiver
Operation Wide Receiver was particularly significant because it took place in part under the supervision of William Newell, the same Special Agent in Charge (SAC) who oversaw Operation Fast and Furious, and because attorneys and officials in the Department’s Criminal Division who reviewed Operation Wide Receiver for possible prosecution learned that firearms purchased by subjects during the investigation had “walked.”
Operation Wide Receiver was conducted in two parts between March 2006 and December 2007 by agents in ATF’s Tucson Office, which is part of ATF’s Phoenix Field Division. The investigation involved several straw purchasers, one of whom was a subject in both parts of the case. During the course of the investigation, the subjects purchased hundreds of firearms from a Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) who was working as an ATF confidential informant and who recorded his in-person and telephonic communications with the subjects. Based on these recordings and other evidence – including court-ordered electronic surveillance – ATF agents knew that the subjects were purchasing firearms for other persons, converting firearms to illegal weapons, and transporting firearms to Mexico. However, during the course of Operation Wide Receiver, agents did not arrest any subjects and seized less than a quarter of the more than 400 firearms purchased.
Although investigative activity ceased in Operation Wide Receiver by December 2007, the case sat idle with the U.S. Attorney’s Office without any indictments until September 2009, when the Department’s Criminal Division assigned a trial attorney to prosecute the case. The trial attorney concluded upon reviewing the case file that ATF had not interdicted the majority of the firearms purchased by the Operation Wide Receiver subjects. She included this information in e-mails to her supervisors and in two prosecution memoranda. In April 2010, Jason Weinstein, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General (DAAG) in the Criminal Division, reviewed the prosecution memorandum for Operation Wide Receiver I and concluded that ATF had allowed guns to “walk.”23 Weinstein briefed Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General (AAG) of the Criminal Division, about the case and then held a meeting with senior ATF personnel to discuss potential public relations challenges with the prosecution. The subjects were finally indicted in May and October 2010, after a prosecutor from the Criminal Division took over responsibility for the case.
In late February 2006, the owner of a Tucson-based FFL contacted an agent in ATF’s Tucson Office with information that a customer had purchased six AR-15 lower receivers at a gun show the previous weekend and had asked about purchasing 20 additional AR-15 lower receivers that the FFL had on order.25 The FFL told the agent that he suspected the customer – Gregory Gonzalez – was a straw purchaser. The FFL told us that several factors made him suspicious of Gonzalez, including Gonzalez’s age (18 years old ) and interest in buying all 20 lower receivers that were on order, and that Gonzalez bought the guns with “wads of cash” from his pocket. The FFL also said that he saw Gonzalez on the second day of the gun show, and that Gonzalez had a bag containing an additional seven or eight lower receivers purchased from someone else.
On March 2, 2006, Special Agent Brandon Garcia, then a new agent in ATF’s Tucson Office, interviewed the FFL and learned that Gonzalez planned to pick up the 20 AR-15 lower receivers when the FFL received them and had asked the FFL about buying as many as 50 AR-15 lower receivers “each time.” Garcia told us that the FFL had provided leads to ATF in the past, and that his initial impression was that the FFL was a “Good Samaritan informant” with a clean record who “wanted to do the right thing.” Based on the information provided by the FFL, ATF officially opened an investigation the same day.
The FFL received the 20 AR-15 lower receivers on March 7, 2006. That same day, the Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) assigned to the case, Jennifer Maldonado, authorized the ATF to request that the FFL make consensual recordings of his conversations with Gonzalez and others.26 The FFL agreed to ATF’s request and on March 15, 2006, recorded a conversation during which Gonzalez told the FFL that he would purchase the firearms at a gun show in Mesa, Arizona, on March 18, 2006.
According to ATF records, agents intended to conduct surveillance of Gonzalez’s purchase at the gun show using an undercover agent stationed in the FFL’s booth and then maintain surveillance of the vehicles agents believed were transporting the firearms. If the vehicles began heading toward the border, ATF planned to notify the Port of Entry (POE) and have Customs and Border Protection (CBP) pull the vehicle aside for a secondary inspection. ATF planned to arrest Gonzalez and obtain a search warrant for his known residences if CBP found the lower receivers at the border. Garcia told us that at this time he was unclear about the direction of the case. He said that based on discussions with some of the senior agents in the office, he thought that Gonzalez would buy the receivers and drive to the border, and ATF would stop him there.27
On March 18, 2006, Gonzalez, accompanied by a man later identified as Ismael Betancourt, arrived at the gun show to buy the 20 lower receivers from the FFL.28 Gonzalez filled out the Form 4473s and paid $5,300 in cash for the firearms. While waiting for the NICS background check, Gonzalez asked the FFL about ordering 50 more AR-15 lower receivers and the FFL told him that a purchase that large would require a deposit. Gonzalez looked at Betancourt, who nodded his head “yes,” and agreed to make a down payment. According to an ATF report of investigation, Gonzalez said that he would contact the FFL at the gun show the next morning to order the receivers “if the money was available.” An undercover ATF agent helped load the 20 receivers Gonzalez had already purchased into Betancourt’s car. Betancourt then drove off in his car, and Gonzalez drove away in a white truck.
Agents followed Betancourt and Gonzalez to a restaurant. Agents did not observe weapons being transferred between the vehicles in the restaurant parking lot, so they continued surveillance of the car when Gonzalez and Betancourt drove in opposite directions after leaving the restaurant. However, agents later lost visual contact.
The next morning, Gonzalez failed to meet the FFL at the gun show to make the down payment, and ATF believed that the surveillance operation had been compromised. On March 20, 2006, Garcia sent an e-mail to RAC Higman, his supervisor, stating that AUSA Maldonado had advised Garcia that “we are good for the 922A6 [false statements charge] for Gonzalez.”29 Maldonado told us she did not recall being asked to determine whether or when subjects in Operation Wide Receiver were eligible to be charged with a violation, but that she “must have said that if [Garcia] said that to [Higman].” Garcia told us that he did not recall any discussions with Maldonado leading up to this e-mail and did not think there was sufficient evidence at that time to prosecute Gonzalez on straw purchaser charges because Gonzalez was driving his work truck that day and could have returned to work while Betancourt took the firearms to Gonzalez’s house. Thus, according to Garcia, it was not clear that Gonzalez actually “transferred” the firearms to Betancourt. Garcia said that he and Higman discussed conducting surveillance to observe a transfer, then interdicting and seizing the firearms and making arrests at the border.
On March 24, 2006, Gonzalez contacted the FFL and told him that he wanted to purchase $10,000 worth of receivers, which the FFL said would be about 37 receivers. On March 28, 2006, in a phone call consensually monitored and recorded by ATF, Gonzalez told the FFL that he was on his way to Tucson to make a down payment on the receivers. At ATF’s direction, the FFL arranged to meet Gonzalez at a fast-food restaurant and wore a recording device for the meeting. When Gonzalez arrived, he provided the FFL an envelope containing $2,500 and told him that he needed to keep the total amount of the purchase under $10,000 so that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would not be notified.30 The FFL told Gonzalez that the IRS would not be notified. Gonzalez also told the FFL he wanted to purchase 50 firearms rather than only 37 and wanted to order an additional 50. In addition, Gonzalez told the FFL that he planned to take the firearms to a shop near Phoenix where they would be converted to fully automatic weapons. The FFL warned Gonzalez that converting the weapons was illegal, but Gonzalez said he just dropped the guns off and stayed out of it and “was clean.”
Gonzalez originally intended to complete the purchase at a gun show on April 1, 2006, but told the FFL in a recorded telephone call that he had to change this to April 2 because his bank could not complete the money transfer in time and he had to travel to San Diego to pick up the money for the purchase. Similar to Gonzalez’s March 18 purchase, ATF agents planned to conduct surveillance of the April 2 purchase. The plan also included coordinating with agents in ATF’s San Diego Office if Gonzalez traveled there to pick up the money and placing a tracking device on his vehicle to help locate the machine gun conversion shop previously mentioned.
We received conflicting information about whether agents intended to take any enforcement action. According to Garcia, agents intended to execute search and arrest warrants if they located the machine shop. However, contemporaneous e-mails indicate that the surveillance was intended to locate the shop and observe Gonzalez deliver the firearms to it, but not to seize the firearms or take other enforcement action. For example, on March 30, 2006, RAC Higman wrote the following in an e-mail to a Supervisory Special Agent in the Phoenix Field Division, which was supporting surveillance of the suspected machine shop:
The bandits have put a $ deposit toward buying 50 this Sat., and intend on 50 more in the next week or two. We have verified 26 to date; the USAO is on board. We are looking to let these 50 walk while identifying the location/subject who is doing the conversions with an eye to doing Search/Arrest warrant the next go ‘round.
Similarly, a Phoenix Group Supervisor stated in an e-mail on March 30, 2006, to agents assisting the surveillance that, “Our mission is to locate the illegal gun smith. There is no projected enforcement activity or surveillance beyond locating the alleged conversion factory.” In a reply to this e-mail, Higman told Phoenix agents, “We have two AUSA[s] assigned to this matter, and the USAO @ Tucson is prepared to issue Search and Arrest Warrants. We already have enough for the 371 [conspiracy] and 922 a6 [false statements] charges, but we want the Title II manufacturing and distribution pieces also – we want it all.”31
In the end, no surveillance was necessary on April 2 because the purchase did not occur. Gonzalez called the FFL and told him that he was having trouble with his bank and did not have the money. After several unsuccessful attempts to complete the sale, the FFL called Gonzalez on April 11 and told him he had two days to get the money, or the FFL would sell the receivers to a dealer in Tucson. As discussed below, this purchase was eventually made to an associate of Gonzalez, Jonathan Horowitz
The rest of the story is covered in pages 27-80 in this DOJ report.
Operation Fast and Furious.The Gunfight and the Gangsters.
On October 31, 2009, special agents working in the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) received information from a local gun store about the recent purchases of multiple AK- 47 style rifles by four individuals. Agents began investigating the purchases and soon came to believe that the men were so-called “straw purchasers” involved in a large-scale gun trafficking organization responsible for buying guns for transport to violent Mexican drug trafficking organizations. This investigation was later named “Operation Fast and Furious.”1
By the time ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona (U.S. Attorney’s Office) publicly announced the indictment in the case on January 25, 2011, agents had identified more than 40 subjects believed to be connected to a trafficking conspiracy responsible for purchasing over 2,000 firearms for approximately $1.5 million in cash. The vast majority of the firearms purchased by Operation Fast and Furious subjects were AK-47 style rifles and FN Herstal 5.7 caliber pistols. During the course of the investigation, ATF agents seized only about 100 of the firearms purchased, the result of a strategy jointly pursued by ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office that deferred taking overt enforcement action against the individual straw purchasers while seeking to build a case against the leaders of the organization.
Numerous firearms bought by straw purchasers were later recovered by law enforcement officials at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States. One such recovery occurred in connection with the tragic shooting death of a federal law enforcement agent, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent Brian Terry. On January 16, 2010, one of the straw purchasers, Jaime Avila, purchased three AK-47 style rifles from a Phoenix-area gun store. ATF agents learned about that purchase 3 days later and, consistent with the investigative strategy in the case, made no effort to locate Avila or seize the rifles although ATF had identified Avila as a suspect in November 2009. Two of the three rifles purchased by Avila on January 16 were recovered 11 months later at the scene of the murder of Agent Terry, who was shot and killed on December 14, 2010, as he tried to arrest persons believed to be illegally entering the United States.
The day after and in response to Agent Terry’s murder, ATF agents arrested Avila. Several weeks later, on January 19, 2011, the U.S. Attorney’s Office indicted 20 Operation Fast and Furious straw purchasers and gun traffickers. As of August 1, 2012, 14 defendants, including Avila, entered guilty pleas to one or more counts of the indictment.
Although the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was assigned to investigate the murder of Agent Terry, the senior leadership of ATF and the Department of Justice (Department or DOJ) took little action in the immediate aftermath of Agent Terry’s death to learn more about an ATF investigation that involved the trafficking of approximately 2,000 weapons over many months, and how guns purchased by a previously-identified subject of that investigation ended up being recovered at the scene of Agent Terry’s murder.
Shortly after Agent Terry’s death, stories began appearing on the Internet alleging that ATF had allowed firearms to “walk” to Mexico, and that one of those firearms may have been linked to the death of a federal law enforcement officer.
The flaws in Operation Fast and Furious became widely publicized as a result of the willingness of a few ATF agents to publicly report what they knew about it, and the conduct of the investigation became the subject of a Congressional inquiry. On January 27, 2011, Senator Charles E. Grassley wrote to ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson that the Senate Judiciary Committee had received allegations that ATF had “sanctioned the sale of hundreds of assault weapons to suspected straw purchasers,” who then transported the firearms throughout the southwest border area and into Mexico. On February 4, 2011, the Department responded in writing by denying the allegations and asserting that “ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.” However, after examining how Operation Fast and Furious and other ATF firearms trafficking investigations were conducted, the Department withdrew the February 4 letter on December 2, 2011, because it contained inaccuracies.
Also on January 27, 2011, Senator Grassley’s staff brought the allegations of one ATF agent to the attention of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). We interviewed the agent and began a preliminary inquiry into the matter. On February 28, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder requested the OIG to conduct a review of Operation Fast and Furious, and we agreed to conduct the review. This report describes the results of the OIG’s review.
Defendant Sentenced to Life in Prison for the Murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers processed a cartel member, July 31, 2018, who was wanted in the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry. The suspect, who was in the custody of FBI agents, was traveling through Houston to face charges in a federal court in Arizona.
Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes is the lone remaining member to face charges related to the December 14, 2010 killing of Terry.
Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, also known as Jesus Lionel Sanchez Meza and Lionel Portillo-Meza, is one of seven defendants charged in the District of Arizona with murder and other crimes arising from the murder of Agent Terry. Osorio-Arellanes was taken into custody in 2017 by Mexican authorities in Chihuahua, Mexico based on a provisional arrest warrant issued at the request of the United States. He was transported to Mexico City for extradition proceedings and arrived in the United States on August 1, 2018.
2015, a Tucson jury convicted two men, Ivan Soto-Barraza and Jesus Lionel Sanchez-Meza of killing Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry. Agent Terry was killed in the line of duty in December 2010 in a firefight with five men who were looking for drug smugglers to rob.
The murder occurred during a gunfight between USBP agents and five members of a cartel “rip crew”. This crew allegedly patrolled the desert along the U.S.-Mexico border looking for opportunities to rob drug dealers. Four members of this rip crew have already been sentenced in the U.S.
Special Attorneys David Leshner and Todd Robinson
Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes was sentenced in federal court 8 January 2020 to life in prison for his role in the murder of 40-year-old U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry on December 14, 2010.
On February 12, 2019, a federal jury found that Osorio-Arellanes, 41, was part of an armed crew of bandits that murdered Agent Terry while they were attempting to rob drug smugglers transporting drugs from Mexico into the United States. Osorio-Arellanes was convicted of nine counts, including first degree murder, second degree murder, conspiracy to commit robbery, attempted robbery, assault on four Border Patrol Agents and carrying a firearm during a crime of violence. Osorio-Arellanes is the sixth of seven defendants in this case to be convicted and sentenced to date.
“Brian Terry exemplified the very best of law enforcement: A selfless, determined agent who was committed to protecting the people of the United States,” said U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer of the Southern District of California. “The United States has vigorously pursued justice for Agent Terry’s family and for the men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol. A life sentence for Agent Terry’s murder cannot eliminate his family’s suffering. But it is our hope that this sentence brings some degree of comfort to Agent Terry’s family in knowing that the individuals responsible for his murder will be held accountable.”
“Today’s sentencing reflects the FBI’s unwavering commitment to ensure that all those responsible for the death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry are brought to justice,” said Sean Kaul, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Phoenix Field Office.
“Today brings us one step closer to justice for Agent Brian Terry’s murder,” said Tucson Sector Chief Roy Villareal. “The sentencing brings a painful time closer to an end and serves as a reminder of the grave dangers our agents face in their selfless commitment to the safety of their communities and country.”
According to the evidence presented at trial, on December 14, 2010, Agent Terry’s elite Border Patrol BORTAC unit was in a rural area north of Nogales, Arizona, to interdict an armed “rip crew” that was robbing drug traffickers. The BORTAC team observed a group of five bandits armed with assault rifles walking through a wash. The BORTAC agents announced their presence, and the bandits fired on the agents. The agents returned fire. A bullet fired by one of the bandits struck Agent Terry in the lower back. His fellow agents provided first aid, but Agent Terry was fatally injured.
Defendants Ivan Soto-Barraza and Jesus Lionel Sanchez-Meza were arrested in Mexico and subsequently extradited to the United States in 2014. They were convicted by a jury of first degree murder and other offenses in December 2015 following a jury trial and were sentenced to life in prison.
Defendants Manuel Osorio-Arellanes and Rosario Rafael Burboa-Alvarez pleaded guilty to first degree murder. Osorio-Arellanes was sentenced to 360 months in prison, and Burboa-Alvarez was sentenced to 324 months in prison.
Defendant Rito Osorio-Arellanes pleaded guilty to conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery and was sentenced to 96 months in prison.
Defendant Jesus Favela-Astorga was arrested by Mexican authorities in November 2017 pursuant to a provisional arrest request filed by the United States Government. He is pending extradition to the United States and will be tried for Agent Terry’s murder following his extradition.
The case is being prosecuted by attorneys from the Southern District of California, Special Attorneys Todd W. Robinson and David D. Leshner. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona is recused. The case was investigated by the FBI. The apprehension was a coordinated effort by the Mexican Navy (SEMAR), Mexico’s Office of the Attorney General (PGR), FBI, U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Border Patrol with significant assistance provided by the Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs.