Colombian Citizen Sentenced To 41 Months For Illegally Exporting Firearms From Florida To Colombia

Tampa, Florida - United States District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell has sentenced Jorge Giovanny Gonzalez-Lopez (42, Colombia) to 41 months in prison for conspiring to smuggle firearms from the United States to Colombia. Gonzalez-Lopez was also sentenced to a 3-year term of supervised release. Gonzalez-Lopez was extradited from Colombia to the United States in February 2024, and has been in custody since that time. Gonzalez-Lopez pled guilty on July 11, 2024.

According to court documents, Gonzalez-Lopez is a citizen of Colombia who traveled to Florida in late 2017 and again in early 2018, and aided and abetted by others, acquired firearms, including several types of assault rifles, then illegally exported them from Clearwater, Tampa and Kissimmee, Florida, to Colombia. Gonzalez-Lopez and his co-conspirators attempted to obliterate the serial numbers on some of the firearms so that they could not be traced. Neither Gonzalez-Lopez nor his co-conspirators applied for or obtained the necessary licenses for exporting defense articles as required by federal law.

This case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations, with assistance from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Colombia's Policía Fiscal y Aduanera (POLFA), a unit of the National Police of Colombia. The Justice Department's Office of International Affairs and the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section's Office of the Judicial Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá worked with Colombian authorities to secure the arrest and extradition of Gonzalez-Lopez. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney E. Jackson Boggs, Jr.