Plans to smuggle guns to Venezuela, plot murder end in prison for Jacksonville immigrants

A Venezuelan immigrant whose lawyer argued he shipped guns back home from Jacksonville “to ease the suffering of the Venezuelan people” will serve six years behind bars for smuggling and for an abortive murder-for-hire plot, a federal judge has decided.

Antonio Jose Melean Reyes, 30, was sentenced along with Honduran immigrant Gabriel Pinnace, who bought two AR-15-style rifles and a Glock 9mm pistol that Reyes stuffed into a futon and shipped to his hometown of Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second-largest city.

“The intent was for such arms to be used by opponents of the Venezuelan regime to defend themselves against lawless government action and potentially to fight to remove the corrupt regime currently in power,” Reyes's attorney, David Frakt, wrote last month in a filing asking for lenience.

Reyes “has scars on his body from being shot in Venezuela in 2016, four times with regular ammunition and three times with rubber bullets,” Frakt’s memo told Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan.

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The lawyer said Reyes, who has lived in Jacksonville since 2016, had sought asylum in this country and reported he had been shot during a protest in Venezuela and imprisoned two years for protesting the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Reyes recruited Pinnace, now 32, to buy the guns in his name and the men agreed to scratch off the weapons' serial numbers to make them untraceable, according to a plea agreement Pinnace signed. Pinnace was never charged with a role in the murder plot, although Reyes acknowledged talking with Pinnacle about it.

The gun-filled futon Reyes shipped in 2021 had been spotted during an X-ray scan in Miami and seized by federal agents, who were able to restore serial numbers on two guns and found a number on one weapon that was still intact, according to court records.

But Reyes, listed in state court records as a framer in the building industry, wasn’t questioned about the shipment until he was in the Duval County jail last year for a probation violation on a reckless driving charge, according to a plea agreement he signed in January.

The lawyer quoted a psychiatrist’s report on Reyes that said “his greatest fear is being deported to his native country, which will result in being killed due to his previous protest actions.”

Reyes told federal investigators that “customers in Venezuela” had paid $2,000 to $3,000 for the guns, the agreement said, and gave permission for agents to check his cellphone for messages.

That led to the murder-for-hire charge.

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The phone’s history “contained conversations between the defendant and Pinnace regarding trafficking firearms domestically and abroad,” Reyes's plea agreement said, plus messages over three weeks last year about finding someone to handle the killing of two other Venezuelan immigrants.

“They owe us $60,000,” Reyes answered when Pinnace asked what the unnamed murder targets had done, according to slides displaying translations of text messages between the men filed this month as evidence for their sentencings.

“My people offer 15k cash” for the killings, Reyes typed after switching to WhatsApp for a conversation last July.

“The down payment on a house is 15k to 20k,” answered Pinnace, 32, who initially wanted $20,000 but relented, saying “When you have the money ready tell me.”

The talk led to nothing, however. By early August, Pinnace, who had left Honduras by age 16, messaged that Reyes would have to find someone else. “My friend got into trouble with the police,” he wrote.

Reyes was arrested at a traffic stop days later and by the end of August a criminal complaint had been filed in federal court. After talking to investigators, Reyes coordinated another deal where Pinnace bought guns for someone else, and Pinnace was charged in September. Both men took plea deals in January.

Pinnace was sentenced for smuggling guns and making false claims on forms for buying guns, a crime commonly called making "straw purchases" of guns to hide the real buyer's identity.