By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
Indie Guns owner Lawrence Michael DeStefano was picked up from Florida’s Orange County Jail by New York detectives this week after serving nearly 90 days in custody and flown to New York City aboard a private jet.
When they landed, the officers took a group photo and then rushed DeStefano to an NYPD precinct to be booked, and then to a quick court hearing in Queens. Afterward, he was taken to Rikers Island, a notorious 413-acre state prison located in the East River near the Bronx, where he remains incarcerated.
At the court hearing, a New York State prosecutor tried to portray him as an “evil gun runner,” DeStefano said, but the judge cut her off.
“The judge looked at her and said, ‘I have a 65-year-old man with no criminal record and you’re saying all these bad things about him.’ Then he turned to me and said, ‘You’ve got some real serious charges against you. If you’ve got somewhere to stay, I will let you out on bail,’” DeStefano said over a jail phone Friday morning. “This is going to be a fight and the gloves are off. I am going balls-to-the-wall on this. It’s going to get ugly.”
DeStefano’s court-appointed defense attorney was of little help. She showed up just seconds before the hearing began.
“She had no idea what was going on,” he said.
He will appear in court for a bail hearing in two weeks, DeStefano said.
“I need to figure out how to get a message to the gun community,” he said. “If I am out on bail, I could win this. I know what I need to do to win this. I need to do research, but they’re seizing it for evidence. They already deleted my Telegram account after they got my password,” he said.
Throughout the trip, the detectives were talking furiously with the New York State Attorney General’s Office about whether to issue a press release, DeStefano said.
“It was chaos. Everyone was on their phones. They decided to issue a press release,” he said. “You guys really think you’re doing a press release? You’re helping me. The gun culture is a tight-knit family.”
New York State Attorney General Letitia James issued a massive press release late Wednesday, titled, “Attorney General James and NYPD Commissioner Tisch Announce Indictment of Florida Man for Illegally Shipping Firearms and Ghost Guns to New York.”
It contains a link to a 42-page indictment that charges DeStefano with 71 felonies, which could see him jailed for a total of 521 years.
“Lawrence Destefano and his company Indie Guns are accused of flooding New York with illegal firearms, and we are determined to bring him to justice,” James said in the press release. “I will not tolerate illegal and dangerous weapons in our communities, and I thank our partners in law enforcement for their work to shut down this ghost gun supplier.”
Despite the allegation and the centuries behind bars DeStefano faces, the press release indicates that only a dozen actual firearms were recovered, along with “two ghost gun kits, 28 high-capacity magazines, and over 1,400 rounds of ammunition, which were mailed to locations in Brooklyn, Queens, and Nassau County.”
The press release also mentions the default judgement James won in a civil suit against DeStefano, which he ignored.
“In March 2024, Attorney General James secured a $7.8 million judgment and court order against Indie Guns prohibiting it from selling firearms in New York,” the press release states.
The lengthy press release even includes quotes from NYPD Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch, HSI New York Special Agent in Charge Ricky J. Patel and USPIS Inspector in Charge Ketty Larco-Ward of the New York Division. All strongly supported James for “disrupting the dangerous illicit weapons pipeline,” and for “dismantling gun trafficking networks.”
DeStefano knows he will be severely outgunned in court.
“I am ready for the fight,” he said.
The Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project wouldn’t be possible without you. Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support pro-gun stories like this.
