A 22-year-old Sauk Rapids, Minn., man received a five-year federal prison sentence this week for illegally dealing privately made firearms — commonly called "ghost guns" — that lack serial numbers, making them difficult to trace by law enforcement.
Jay James Olson pleaded guilty last year to one count of willfully engaging in the business of manufacturing firearms without a license after being caught selling 16 ghost guns and other accessories to a law enforcement informant months earlier.
U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud sided with the government's request to impose the longest sentence allowed under statute, adding during Wednesday's sentencing hearing that Olson's actions posed a "grave danger" to the public.
According to court documents, Olson was not federally licensed to make firearms and was barred from possessing them based on separate pending gun and drug charges in Stearns and Mille Lacs counties. For $20,000, he arranged to sell to an informant unserialized firearms and accessories such as a silencer made from an oil filter, a machine gun conversion device, carbine conversion kits and multiple high-capacity magazines.
"The proliferation of these ghost guns and machine gun conversion devices presents a serious threat to the safety of our communities," U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said in a statement Thursday.
Law enforcement arrested Olson during a coordinated purchase of the items in April 2022 at a Waite Park residence. There, they retrieved firearm assembly kits, unserialized lower receivers and various firearms parts and accessories. Olson lived in his grandmother's Sauk Rapids basement, and investigators later recovered from there manufacturing tools, assembly kits and a Glock firearm assembly diagram.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Bejar wrote in a court memo arguing for Olson's sentence that Olson touted the "benefits" of having firearms that are harder to trace, and told the informant that he would soon increase the price of his ghost guns because of a recent federal crackdown on such weapons.
Olson explained that he needed to "slow down" production, suggesting that he made and sold about 170 to 200 ghost guns in the months before going to jail for a shooting. That arrest cost him about $50,000, 30 firearms, 20 pounds of marijuana and 6 pounds of marijuana wax. Olson's attorney, Bruce Nestor, dismissed that account as false bravado to project an inflated image of his capabilities.
