Man accused of selling guns from prison had contact with Buffalo mass shooter Payton Gendron

A 24-year-old Texas man was charged Tuesday with brazenly selling guns and gun parts while locked up in a Louisiana prison. Prosecutors revealed he communicated with self-proclaimed white supremacist Payton Gendron before the teen’s 2022 racially motivated mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket.

The suspect, Hayden Espinosa of Corpus Cristie, Texas, allegedly sold guns and firearm components to an undercover New York City police officer in a case that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragged described Tuesday as a “confluence of weapons and extremism”.

“It’s very, very disturbing,” Bragg said at a news conference in which he announced the charges against Espinosa.

Espinosa was charged with four counts of carrying a firearm, a machine gun, silencers and a disguised weapon, prosecutors said. He was also charged with third-degree attempted criminal sale of a firearm.

It was unclear Tuesday whether Espinosa had retained an attorney.

Investigators investigating the May 14, 2022, Buffalo massacre at a Tops supermarket discovered a Telegram channel that Espinosa allegedly operated from prison to sell firearms and components from prison, including Glock handguns and devices nicknamed “Glock switches” or “automatic triggers” used to modify a semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic weapon, prosecutors said.

Espinosa allegedly used cellphones smuggled to him in prison to sell guns and components through the Telegram messaging app channel he called “3D Amendment,” which Bragg described as “a hub of ethnically and racially motivated extremist ideology.”

“The combination of extremism and guns is incredibly dangerous and threatens the safety of New Yorkers,” Bragg said, adding that members of Espinosa’s Telegram channel were motivated by neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology .

Channel members were also motivated by “accelerationism” – which authorities explained as “the belief that violence, including through obtaining guns and weapons, is necessary to achieve a total collapse of the status quo and to create a new far-right socio-political reality.” “.

Bragg said Espinosa’s Telegram channel attracted individuals, including Gendron, who stockpiled guns and committed violence.

The NYPD’s Racially and Ethnicly Motivated Extremism (REME) team discovered Espinosa’s Telegram channel in May 2022 while helping investigate the Buffalo mass shooting in which 10 Black people were shot and three others injured, authorities said. Prosecutors have not said whether Espinosa sold guns to Gendron.

“Espinosa and other members of the chain allegedly advertise the sale of illegal firearms and parts, including silencers, high-capacity magazines, Glock-style handguns and automatic triggers” , according to a statement released Tuesday by prosecutors. “Several participants purchased firearms and gun parts from Espinosa and posted about their purchases on his channel,” according to a statement released Tuesday by prosecutors.

While incarcerated at the Pollock Federal Correctional Complex, a high-security prison in Grant Parish, Louisiana, Espinosa allegedly sold illegal firearms and firearm parts to undercover NYPD officers on three occasions between August 7, 2023 and November 13, 2023, according to the indictment.

At the time, Espinosa was serving a 33-month prison sentence for illegal sale and possession of Glock switches, officials said. Espinosa was released from federal prison on June 4 and immediately arrested by the Grant Parish Sheriff’s Office following the indictment in New York State Supreme Court, officials said.

Among the items the undercover agent allegedly purchased from Espinosa were a Glock-style handgun and an untraceable 3D-printed AR-style “ghost gun,” authorities said. He is also accused of selling the undercover agent two gun silencers and trying to sell him a Glock-19 handgun, officials said.

“At a time when gun violence has devastated American families across the country, we cannot imagine the bloodshed these weapons could have caused if they had been placed in the wrong hands,” said Ivan Arvelo, the Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations in New York. .

In addition to selling illegal firearms and components from prison, Espinosa allegedly posted content on Telegram and his YouTube channel promoting white supremacist, neo-Nazi and anti-government extremist ideologies, officials said.

NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban praised the work of his department’s REME team, saying, “Its existence underscores the urgency with which the NYPD and our law enforcement partners Laws consider the threat from far-right extremists. We will stop at nothing to keep New Yorkers safe. identify and dismantle arms trafficking networks that fuel hatred. »

Espinosa is scheduled to be arraigned in New York on June 24.