A South Carolina man will spend more than 25 years in a U.S. federal prison for his role as the leader of a gun smuggling operation that provided the terrorist organization Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) with .50 caliber and .30 caliber machine guns. The leader of the conspiracy ran the operation from behind bars in South Carolina, where he was serving time for multiple state-level drug trafficking crimes. The gun running was allegedly linked to a drug debt that he needed to pay.
Court documents in the criminal case against Shawn Bisnauth revealed that from March 2022, he worked with at least six other people from South Carolina to have them purchase high-value rifles that fired .50 caliber and .30 caliber rounds. Those weapons were the semi-automatic variations of the machine guns known as Ma-Deuce and Browning .30 cals that gunsmiths in Mexico could then turn into fully automatic machine guns.
Bisnauth pleaded guilty to the charges on May 7. Last week, a federal judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison.
According to federal prosecutors, Bisnauth coordinated the purchase of the rifles from behind bars at a prison in South Carolina. The inmate used smuggled cell phones to orchestrate the purchases and deliveries of the weapons. Bisnauth used people with clean backgrounds to buy the weapons and lie on federal forms claiming that they were the buyers of the weapons, when in reality they were to be delivered to cartel gun runners in Houston, Texas.
From Houston, the guns were moved to the Texas border town of McAllen. Smugglers would then move them across the Anzalduas port of entry into Reynosa, Tamaulipas, and into the hands of CJNG. Breibart Texas reported extensively on how the city of Reynosa is controlled by a faction of the Gulf Cartel known as the Metros, which is aligned with CJNG.
Documents in the case revealed that at the time of the conspiracy, Bisnauth would talk to a CJNG operator who claimed he needed the weapons because CJNG was in a turf war with the rival terrorist organization La Familia Michoacana.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart News Foundation. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.