On October 1, 2024, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado announced that the co-owners of Modern Arms & Optics, Campbell Slayden and Anthony Gallegos, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the federal government. According to the announcement, the men — who operated out of a Denver-area residence and at gun shows throughout Colorado — ”transferred firearms to people not legally allowed to own firearms” and “conceal[ed] their unlawful firearms manufacturing practices in federally required forms.”
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selling guns to straw purchasers
According to court documents, the co-owners of Modern Arms & Optics “engaged in deceptive acts to hide information, mislead, avoid suspicion, and avert further inquiry into their business by knowingly transferring and selling firearms to prohibited persons through the use of straw purchasers.” An illegal straw purchase occurs when someone buys a firearm on behalf of another person who is most likely prohibited from owning the weapon.
Slayden and Gallegos would also “send out electronic links that allowed Form 4473s,” or firearm transaction records, “to be filled out privately and out-of-view by anyone with access to the link. This allowed the straw purchasers, or in some cases the prohibited firearm buyers themselves, to easily supply false and fraudulent misrepresentations.”
Between March 3, 2021, and August 17, 2023, police recovered 62 firearms from crime scenes in three different states that were originally sold by Modern Arms & Optics. According to court documents, many of those guns “were obtained and possessed by dangerous gang members and felons who utilized straw purchasers in transactions with” the company.
modern arms’ illegal gun manufacturing
The court documents also state that Slayden and Gallegos illegally manufactured and sold a variety of firearms from their Denver residence, despite not having the proper Federal Firearms License (FFL) to do so — including “numerous” AR-style rifles and pistols as well as Polymer80 “ghost guns” that lacked serial numbers, making them difficult, if not impossible, to trace.
The duo advertised the guns as “‘custom’ firearms through social media, at gun shows and in private showings to customers…This illegal manufacturing was a regular and significant part of the business.” Examples of the company’s Facebook posts are shown below.
After they manufactured weapons, Slayden and Gallegos would alter their inventory records to indicate that the core components they had acquired were instead complete weapons. As the court documents note, “In doing so, they fraudulently concealed the nature and extent of their manufacturing activities” to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Once Slayden and Gallegos became aware of the ATF’s investigations into their illegal enterprise, the men tried to transfer their business to another co-conspirator who applied for an FFL in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, in July 2022. The application “omitted Slayden’s and [Gallegos’] participation in the business,” but the men advertised its “grand opening” on Facebook.
Days before that “grand opening” was scheduled to take place in September 2022, ATF agents inspected the men’s Denver residence and discovered an unregistered silencer and a forced-reset trigger — an unlicensed machine gun — in addition to the fraudulent inventory records.