A Randolph man and his brother-in-law were sentenced to federal prison yesterday for conspiracy to transport guns from Georgia to Boston, including one weapon found at the scene of a 2006 gang-related shootout in Dorchester.
Nguyen Van Nguyen, 34, of Randolph and his brother-in-law, Chien Dinh Nguyen, 34, of Lawrenceville, Ga., illegally purchased guns from a pawn shop in Georgia last year, often paying a third man to buy the guns for them, federal prosecutors said.
Both men were convicted on Dec. 31, and yesterday US District Court Judge Thomas W. Thrash in Atlanta sentenced Nguyen Van Nguyen to serve nearly 16 years in federal prison. Chien Dinh Nguyen was sentenced to two years and six months in prison.
Special Agent Jim McNally of the Boston field office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said yesterday that the convictions are a victory for law enforcement, which has struggled to reduce gun violence in the city over the last year.
"They were making money supplying gang members with guns," McNally said of the Nguyens. "This is one of the key ways guns go from the legal to the illegal market."
Francey Hakes, the assistant US attorney in Atlanta who prosecuted the case, said federal agents from the ATF noticed that a pawn shop there had sold numerous guns to the same man between April and May of 2006. Agents questioned the man, and he admitted to buying guns on behalf of the Nguyens, who paid him $100 for each purchase.
Hakes did not identify the man but said he agreed to become a "cooperating suspect," recording phone conversations with the Nguyens and wearing a body wire while accompanying Van Nguyen to a pawn shop to purchase a gun.
Prosecutors played the tapes for the jury at the trial. Hakes said the Nguyens bought 23 guns on their own or with help from the cooperating suspect. ATF officials said the men were charged with conspiracy to traffic guns and entering false information into the records of a federally licensed firearms dealer.
One of those guns, a Makarov 9mm, turned up in Dorchester after a 2006 shootout. Sergeant Thomas Foley of the Boston police gang unit said officers investigating a shootout on Adams Street found a sport utility vehicle pockmarked with bullet holes. The occupants had fled, and when police searched the vehicle they found two guns hidden in compartments in the car's frame.
Investigators reported the guns and their serial numbers to the ATF, which found that the Makarov 9mm had been purchased in Atlanta just two months earlier. The other weapon was not linked to the Nguyens.
The next month, on July 15, officers found a gun linked to the Nguyens on Dick Street in Dorchester. Police responding to a disturbance saw several people run as they approached, Foley said. One of them dropped a Hi-Point .380-caliber handgun in the walkway, which Foley said was also linked to the Atlanta pawn shop, Foley said.
Since then, a third gun from their collection was recovered, after a burglary in Quincy.
The guns cost between $150 and $200 in Georgia, but fetch $900 and up in Massachusetts.
"The ATF calls it the Iron Pipeline," Hakes said. "It's a common thing for gun traffickers to purchase in a source state like Georgia and traffick them in Boston, New Jersey, and New York."
Nguyen Van Nguyen had three prior felony convictions, for heroin possession, assault with a dangerous weapon, and assault with intent to rob, in the 1990s, a record that meant he is considered an armed career criminal under federal law and faced a mandatory 15-year prison sentence.
The Boston shooting investigation remains open. Boston investigators also traveled to Atlanta to testify at the Nguyens's trial.
The unidentified cooperating suspect pleaded guilty to conspiracy to traffic firearms and was sentenced to five years' probation.
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