MIAMI, CMC – A 36-year-old man from Trinidad and Tobago has been sentenced to four years and nine months in a federal prison for conspiring to smuggle more than 200 firearms from the United States to his home country.
Shem Wayne Alexander, of Port of Spain, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge John L. Badalamenti in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida after previously pleading guilty to conspiracy to export firearms unlawfully.
The court also ordered the forfeiture of firearms seized during the investigation.
According to court records and the plea agreement, between April 2019 and April 2022, Alexander and his co-conspirators exported firearms, firearm components, including upper and lower receivers and gun parts kits, and related items from Florida to Trinidad and Tobago without the required licenses or declarations.
Investigators said that in total, more than 200 firearms were smuggled during the three-year conspiracy.
One shipment was intercepted on April 21, 2021, when officers from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service and the Customs and Excise Division seized two punching bags at Piarco International Airport in Port of Spain.
The shipment, sent from the United States and declared as “household items,” concealed a cache of weapons and ammunition inside the punching bags.
Authorities said the items included approximately eleven 9mm pistols, two .38 special revolvers, a 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun, multiple AR-15-style barrels and foregrips, 32 AR-15 magazines, one AR-15 drum magazine, 470 rounds of AR-15 ammunition, 34 9mm magazines, three 9mm drum magazines, hundreds of additional rounds of ammunition, magazine couplers, and shotgun chokes.
Prosecutors said Alexander and his associates arranged the shipment without providing written notice to the carrier about the true contents.
The case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations, including its Attaché Caribbean office, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, with assistance from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service’s Transnational Organized Crime Unit and Special Investigations Unit, as well as several U.S. agencies.
The Department of Justice Office of International Affairs, the Jamaica Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the Jamaica Constabulary Force also supported Alexander’s extradition to the United States.
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