Federal agents this month won an indictment against an Orange County man who allegedly sold an illegal, fully automatic, AK-47 assault rifle to an undercover officer for $2,500.
Though he hasn't publicly declared his stance on the case, Steven Sargon Atneyel is free from custody on $25,000 bail and is scheduled to face arraignment this afternoon inside the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana.
According to a federal Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agent, Atneyel may have been motivated to sell the AK-47 because an ex-girlfriend was aware of the gun and worried she might squeal on him.
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Atneyel–an Orange resident who was born in 1985 and has worked at Weistec Engineering in Santa Ana–unwittingly met the undercover officer at the Westminster Mall parking lot for the cash sale that included a 30-round magazine, according to an ATF report of the transaction.
Government officials allege the defendant fretted in pre-sale text messages about being caught and admitted he possessed a stash of illegal weapons.
Assistant United States Attorney Robyn Kali Bacon, who works in the Department of Justice's Violent and Organized Crime Section based in Los Angeles, is prosecuting the case.
A federal judge has not yet been selected to preside.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.