The owner of a Jerry’s Subs and Pizza franchise in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, pleaded guilty to shipping various rifles and rifle parts, including magazines, receivers, and sights, to Pakistan without the required license from the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls. According to the DOJ press release announcing the plea deal, Kamran Malik, the defendant, shipped the goods in packages with false return addresses and false descriptions of the contents. There is no indication as to  the intended recipients of the firearms and parts in Pakistan. As part of the plea deal, the Government has agreed to argue for a reduction in the offense level from 26 to 23, which would reduce the maximum penalty from 78 to 57 months.

Something else is going on here. There is also a sealed plea agreement supplement. That normally means that the defendant will be a cooperating witness and that the sealed supplement contains a cooperation agreement.  The purpose of sealing that information is to protect the cooperating defendant. Of course, since such supplements pretty much signal that the defendant is going to cooperate with the government, that purpose is largely lost. I suspect this means that the recipients of the items in Pakistan are of more than passing interest to the United States Government.

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