(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — A 26-year-old Lyons man has been sentenced to 8 1/2 years in federal prison for trafficking guns from Kentucky to Chicago — weapons that ended up with felons and at crime scenes, authorities said.
John Phillips pleaded guilty earlier this year to illegally dealing firearms. Prosecutors said he schemed with accomplices from 2016 to 2018 to buy rifles and handguns from private sellers in Kentucky before re-selling them in Chicago.
Many of the guns were sold to convicted felons, and several of the firearms were recovered at crime scenes in Chicago, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
U.S. District Judge Edmond E. Chang imposed the 102-month prison sentence on Phillips, prosecutors said in a news release.
“The breadth and extent of defendant’s firearms trafficking operation is staggering,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Elizabeth R. Pozolo and Kalia Coleman said in a sentencing memorandum. “As a result of defendant and his co-conspirators illegally selling guns, violence ensued involving real victims and disrupting community safety.”
Two other defendants were charged and have pleaded guilty to federal firearm charges as part of the investigation, prosecutors said.
Federal authorities recently launched an effort to target gun trafficking that helps drive Chicago crime.
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