Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Tuesday announced the indictment of a 24-year-old Texas man charged in New York State Supreme Court with selling firearms and parts to an undercover NYPD officer while incarcerated in federal prison.
Corpus Christi resident Hayden Espinosa is accused of using the messaging app Telegram on smuggled phones to sell illegal guns and gun parts from his prison cell inside the Federal Correctional Complex in Pollock, Louisiana. He was there serving a 33-month sentence for selling and possessing auto sears, which are considered machine guns under federal law, according to Bragg’s office.
Bragg said Espinosa ran a channel that promoted racially motivated extremist views, including neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies, to attract gun buyers.
“We see this sad and tragic combination far too often of the intersection of gun violence and gun trafficking and hate and extremism,” Bragg said. “It is very, very disturbing.”
In a Telegram group named “3D Amendment,” Espinosa allegedly made or attempted to make three sales last year to an undercover NYPD officer who was monitoring the online space as part of a multiagency crackdown on hard-to-trace firearms known as ghost guns.
Prosecutors said Espinosa was released from his federal prison term on June 4 and was immediately arrested by the Grant Parish sheriff’s office on the New York state Supreme Court indictment. He is set to be extradited to New York later this month and arraigned on June 24, according to Bragg’s office.
Espinosa faces multiple charges, including four counts of transporting a firearm, machine gun, silencer and disguised gun, and one count of attempted criminal sale of a firearm.
Prosecutors said Espinosa does not have an attorney yet in the case.
