Two geniuses in Georgia hit on what they must have imagined was the perfect crime: sell guns to foreigners anonymously on the dark web; get paid anonymously in Bitcoins; make a billion dollars; spend the rest of their lives watching extreme wrestling and tractor pulls on cable TV. Except, of course, what really happened means that their cable TV viewing options over the next few years are likely to be extremely limited.

Even if, as the dog in the famous cartoon tells the other dog, “on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog” (or a gun smuggler), you can’t stay on the Internet forever. Not surprisingly, even though the two defendants tried to cloak themselves behind the dark web and supposedly anonymous cryptocurrency, they still had to leave their computers, buy the guns, take them to the post office and ship them to real people. And that, as they say, was all she wrote.

According to the indictment, the two defendants, Gerren Johnson and William Jackson, who used the pseudonyms CherryFlavor and CherryFlavor_2, first captured the attention of authorities when a 9mm pistol was “recovered” in the Netherlands from a buyer who said he bought the gun from dark web vendor named CherryFlavor. Shortly thereafter Australian customs recovered another pistol hidden in a karaoke machine (see, nothing ever good comes from karaoke), and the Australian buyer also identified his seller as CherryFlavor.

And here’s how the feds figured out who was hiding behind the CherryFlavor screen name: according to the indictment, Johnson bought an unusual gun, a Cobray Model M-11 Georgia Commemorative 9mm pistol from a dealer in Georgia. Two days later he posted the gun for sale on his dark web site. Now the feds had the link they needed: a non-virtual gun dealer making a real sale in the real world to a real person of a real gun that then shows up on CherryFlavor’s page. Game over.

The interesting thing is what Messrs. CherryFlavor are charged with in the indictment. The first count is operating an unregistered firearms business. The second and third counts are for exports of two guns in violation of the anti-smuggling statute, 18 U.S.C. 554, which forbids exports from the United States “contrary to any law or regulation of the United States.” Oddly, the law said to be violated was not the Arms Export Control Act but 18 U.S.C. § 922(e) which prohibits shipping a firearm without disclosing to the shipper that a firearm is being shipped.

So why aren’t the defendants charged with what appears to be a clear violation of the Arms Export Control Act? We know that prosecutors have argued, not very persuasively, that the knowledge requirement for violations of section 554 is just an intentional export without any requirement that the defendant knows the intentional export is in violation of law. But here, if the allegations of the indictment are true, the case that the defendants knew what they were doing is, as they say, a slam dunk. They sold guns to foreign customers using pseudonyms on the dark web in exchange for Bitcoins and sent the guns hidden in karaoke machines. Criminal intent does not get much clearer than that. My guess is that there is more going on here than Dumb and Dumber selling guns on the dark web. Charges like this suggest that the prosecutors have negotiated with the defendants in exchange for some broader cooperation. If that’s true, it will be interesting to see what happens next.

UPDATE:  Commenter “Name” makes a good point: because the case is in the 11th Circuit, the prosecution has to deal with a stricter intent requirement and has to show that the defendants knew that an export license was required.  See United States v. Macko, 994 F.2d 1526 (11th Cir. 1993).  The defendants’ concealment of the gun in a karaoke machine shows a knowledge of illegality but, perhaps, not necessarily a knowledge of a license requirement under the AECA.  It was for this reason, the commenter said, that the charge was under 18 U.S.C. § 554, which might not be subject to the stricter intent requirement.  Commenter “Name” used a VPN to conceal his/her identity and location, so I suspect this is a person who has some actual knowledge of why the government charged this case the way it did.

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