New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Wednesday the takedown of a prolific Queens-based gun trafficking crew accused of selling firearms and ammo at an East Elmhurst playground, the Queens Center Mall and other locations around the borough.
James secured a 625-count indictment charging five men for participating in the gun smuggling ring, which involved selling dozens of ghost guns, assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
An investigation led by the Office of the Attorney General’s Organized Crime Task Force (OCTF) recovered 86 firearms — including 55 ghost guns and 25 assault weapons — along with more than 90 high-capacity magazines and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
“When gun traffickers flood neighborhoods with untraceable firearms, they fuel violence that tears communities apart,” James said.
Hargeny Fernandez-Gonzalez, 20, of Richmond Hill; Satveer Saini, 20, of East Elmhurst; Adam Youseff Hargeny Zenhaji-Rivas, 20, of Astoria; Mateo Castro-Agudelo, 21, of Long Island City; and Milanjit Sidhu, 20, of Greenwood, Indiana, were all charged with Criminal Sale of a Firearm and/or Criminal Possession of a Firearm, which are Class B violent felonies. The defendants face a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison on each count.
“This investigation successfully stopped a dangerous gun trafficking operation by removing dozens of ghost guns and assault weapons from our streets,” James said. “I will continue to use every available resource to stop illegal gun trafficking and protect our communities from dangerous gun violence.”
The investigation began late last year after Saini, Fernandez-Gonzalez and Senhaji-Rivas paid more than $27,000 to purchase firearms from Indiana, which has less restrictive gun laws than New York. Early in the probe, Saini and Castro-Agudelo were driving from Indiana to Queens with weapons purchased in Indiana when they were pulled over for speeding by the Ohio State Highway Patrol in Medina County, Ohio. The cop recovered nine unloaded serialized handguns from inside Saini’s rental car.
From that point on, Fernandez-Gonzalez turned to Sidhu, a resident of Indiana, to drive weapons from Indianapolis to Queens.
Fernandez-Gonzalez also bought 3D-printed ghost guns in Nassau County and brought them to Queens for other members of the crew to sell. Saini, Castro-Agudelo and Senhaji-Rivas all sold trafficked firearms, high-capacity magazines and ammunition during the course of the multi-agency investigation.
Saini sold these firearms in various locations around Queens, including at the Louis C. Moser Playground in East Elmhurst and in the parking garage at the Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst.
Castro-Agudelo and Fernandez-Gonzales used a garage in Elmhurst to store weapons, at one point hiding a dozen firearms — including seven ghost guns — and numerous high-capacity magazines inside a guitar case in the garage. Castro-Agudelo used the guitar case to transport firearms and ammo to his customers. At least one of the firearm sales he made took place outside a smoke shop in Jackson Heights, where he worked. Castro-Agudelo posted photos of these firearms on social media accounts, including on a publicly available X account, displaying many of the guns and significant amounts of cash.
“These charges highlight law enforcement’s relentless efforts to rid our streets of untraceable ghost guns and other illegal firearms, leading to New York City’s ongoing reductions in shootings and homicides this year,” NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban said. “Simply put, our investigators save lives when they disrupt and dismantle the dangerous networks behind the manufacture, transport and sale of these illicit weapons.”
The takedown was a result of a joint investigation that included controlled firearms purchase operations, covert video surveillance, social media monitoring and analysis of financial and telephone records by the OCTF, the NYPD’s 115th Precinct Field Intelligence Team, ATF agents, the Queens District Attorney’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
“The defendants are accused of amassing a cache of illegal high-powered rifles, handguns and semiautomatic weapons that could have undoubtedly been used to promote violence and further cause irreparable devastation,” HSI New York Special Agent-in-Charge Ivan Arvelo said. “They allegedly displayed sheer disregard for the public’s safety and placed their own selfish gain above all else. HSI New York’s LaGuardia Airport Border Enforcement Security Task Force has stood at the front lines of combatting the gun violence epidemic, and utilizes every tool and resource in its arsenal to do so.”
