A manufacturer of illegal weapons, sentenced to twelve months in prison

Kathleen Frenette

Friday, 9 February 2018 15:38

UPDATE
Friday, 9 February 2018 15:45

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Because “the crimes related to firearms are serious and expose the population to serious dangers, the judge Alain Morand is sentenced a manufacturer of an illegal weapon with a sentence of twelve months incarceration.

Karl Lefrançois is a man of 41 years old, single and without child. For twenty-three years, it has been supplier equipment to the Coca-Cola company.

It has, however, been suspended from his job, at the beginning of the year, after he admitted that he had, between the months of may 2011 and April 2013, imported and manufactured illegal weapons in Canada.

During his guilty plea, Lefrançois had, however, clarified that there was no malicious intent because its purpose was to “collect”

Of collector manufacturer

It is in the mid-90s that Lefrançois has started to become interested in firearms. Recognized by the Sûreté du Québec as a “collector”, the man “buys, repairs, modifies, and resells” the weapons it possesses. “The Beretta pistol of Italian design is his preferred brand,” said the magistrate in his decision.

Without antecedent judicial, “his name does not go in any police investigation and nothing in the evidence allows to connect to any criminal organization.”

However, during the year 2012, in the framework of an investigation into the cross-border trafficking of illegal weapons, “the police are interested in e-mail exchanges between the accused and a referred to as Ric Gandy, residing in Lafayette, Louisiana”.

Illegal in Canada

The analysis of the conversations shows while Lefrançois buys online, with the credit card of his father, “coins legal in the United States, but illegal in Canada.” He did deliver in Gandy that sends the pieces separately.

Other conversations are also in the scene, David Thériault, an ex-military of the canadian armed Forces involved in the manufacture and illegal trafficking of weapons and prohibited devices, sentenced in 2015 to a six-year sentence of imprisonment.

Although the possession and trafficking of weapons, require a minimum sentence of three years, the judge Morand has not thought good to apply it to the case of Lefrançois, since it would have been “grossly disproportionate in respect of the accused”.

As suggested by the defence lawyer, Me, Renald Beaudry, the latter allegedly infringed “the right to protection against all treatments or sorrows cruel and unusual” guaranteed by the Charter of rights and freedom, what the judge Morand has acquiesced.