Two Auckland men who helped funnel legally purchased guns on to the illegal black market are now both serving prison sentences.
The months-long scheme by firearms licence holder Craig Stanley Holtom and middleman Daryl James Rope began to unravel in July 2022 after one of the firearms – a pump-action shotgun bought at a Gun City store in Penrose – wound up in the hands of a man who was wielding it when police shot him.
The serial number on the gun was compared with the police’s then-new firearms sales database and it was revealed that Holtom, 57, had bought the gun that month.
“The courts take this type of offending very seriously,” Auckland District Court Judge Debra Bell said recently as she sentenced Rope to two years and two months’ imprisonment – despite his pleas for mercy because he was the sole caregiver of his two children.
“It goes without saying, Mr Rope, that firearms are inherently dangerous weapons.”
Holtom was sentenced last month by Judge June Jelas to two years and seven months in prison.
Police had gone to Holtom’s home to execute a search warrant four days after the police shooting of Kodie Remana, who was sentenced last December to two years and five months’ imprisonment for firing the weapon at an unoccupied house shortly before the confrontation with police that left him hospitalised.
“A firearms safe was located in [Holtom’s] bedroom but no firearms were located inside,” court documents state, noting that the police database showed he had purchased a dozen 12-gauge shotguns and .22 rifles over the past five months.
When asked to explain the dozen missing firearms, Holtom claimed it was all above board. He had sold them all to a businessman with a valid firearms licence, he said, explaining that the man had bought all 12 just days earlier for $15,000 cash. The other man had an opossum skinning business and intended to distribute the firearms to his crew, Holtom said.
When asked to identify the mystery businessman, Holtom described him as a “half-caste Māori male” who he had met at a Penrose service station a month earlier. Holtom said he had recorded the sales on the back of a receipt but he believed the paper had since been stolen from his vehicle. The man’s mobile number was also written on the missing receipt, he claimed.
He described the sale to police as having taken place on the side of the road in Ōnehunga, after having arranged the deal by ringing the man from a phone box – although he couldn’t remember which one.
When shown a photo of the man who was shot by police, Holtom said he didn’t recognise him.
That much, at least, appeared to be true.
According to the agreed summary of facts for the case, Holtom had bought two shotguns for Remana’s mother, Monique Lisa Lemon, as part of a $1200 cash sale arranged by Rope. Lemon has also pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm.
“Notwithstanding Mr Holtom’s claims about selling his firearms to a legitimate firearms licence holder, police continued their investigation into the whereabouts of the firearms that Mr Holtom had purchased,” court documents state.
An investigation codenamed Operation Dickinson was launched, and six others – including Rope – were later arrested after an analysis of text message data.
“Hey bro u still looking for a tool for the home security?” Rope texted one potential customer in June 2022. “Got a nice little single shot nearly new with 10 rounds. The bro [is] after 8 or nine spot for it.”
Texts then showed him arranging with Holtom to buy that weapon and others for the customer.
The next day, Holtom sent a message asking for a grinding disk for some “panel work on a car”, but police said it was actually thinly coded language checking to make sure Rope had removed the serial numbers from the guns.
He later followed up: “All those numbers gone off aye?”
“Yeah bro first thing,” Rope replied before sending a text message to the customer: “Hey bro forgot to take the number off I’ll come down tomorrow and do it.”
During that same week, Rope arranged a deal with another man in which he tried to set Holtom up with a legitimate job driving trucks, explaining to the purchaser that if Holtom was indebted to them, they could have ready access to his gun licence whenever they wanted.
Rope, sporting a long goatee and grey dreadlocks as he stood in the dock late last month, had hoped to leave the courthouse through the front door with a sentence of home detention. His lawyer, Nalesoni Tupou, suggested Holtom had been the main offender. Rope, he said, had made only about $200 profit from the deals.
“He made a very silly mistake,” Tupou said, emphasising that his client had solo parent duties. “I’m asking for some degree of mercy.”
Crown prosecutor Rangi Cowley conceded that a 10% sentence reduction would be warranted to account for the effects a prison term would have on Rope’s children but she opposed a non-custodial sentence.
Judge Bell agreed, citing an interview with a probation officer before the sentencing.
“Your comments that you felt pressured to act as you did and you were bombarded by Mr Holtom ... concern me in that you don’t seem to take any responsibility for your actions,” she said.
Rope also said he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong and thought he was selling the firearms to hunters.
“That simply does not fit with the summary of facts you agreed to,” the judge said, reading back to him some of his texts. “I don’t accept your explanation.”
She allowed discounts for his guilty pleas and for his children but declined discounts for rehabilitative efforts and remorse, adding that she didn’t think he had any.
“Mr Rope, this is very serious offending,” she said before he was escorted by security to a holding cell. “It’s very fortunate there’s no information in front of me that anyone was killed.”
The act of licensed firearms holders buying guns for those who aren’t allowed to have guns is known as retail diversion, or serving as a “straw buyer”. Straw buyers in New Zealand often resell the guns for a steep cash profit to those in the criminal underworld, officials have previously told the Herald.
Police have devoted extra resources to such schemes in recent years with the establishment of the firearms investigations team, a group of investigators modelled after Australian specialist teams. Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Beal, who previously led the specialist squad, told the Herald last year that the “vast majority” of guns recovered by police appear to be the result of retail diversion.
“There’s a lot of rumours around where gangs get their guns from: importing them in bulk by sea, manufacturing them, burglaries and so on,” he said. “The criminal element doesn’t need to look any further – importing, etc – because diversion is such a simple option.
“We’re seeing how easy it is for one individual with a firearms licence to create a great deal of mayhem.”
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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The man then went on to kick a police officer while being walked to a patrol car.