Five-year prison sentence for 22-year-old Sauk Rapids man who made, sold 'ghost guns'

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.

Prosecutors sought to link Olson's activities to the uptick in violent crime and use of hard-to-trace ghost guns. Bejar cited data from the U.S. Attorney General's Office that showed law enforcement nationwide recovering 23,906 suspected ghost guns between 2016 and 2020 — including in connection with 325 homicides or attempted homicides.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) investigated the case with the Hennepin County Violent Offender Task Force, West Metro Drug Task Force, and Stearns County Sheriff's Office.

Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt said Thursday that the case demonstrated "the immense value of collaborative law enforcement efforts in curbing gun violence in our communities."

William McCrary, special agent in charge of the ATF in St. Paul, added that his agency was "grateful to work beside law enforcement partners like Sheriff Witt who make the reduction of gun violence a top priority."

Nestor meanwhile asked for a lower sentence of three years, arguing there was insufficient evidence to prove Olson was knowingly trafficking firearms to someone he was aware was barred from legally owning guns.

Tostrud, Nestor argued, "should not impose a sentence for the purpose of holding Mr. Olson personally accountable for the uncontrolled gun violence in the United States," which Nestor attributed to "societal acceptance of firearms, the manufacture and marketing of firearms by corporations for profit and the inability and/or unwillingness of governmental authorities to regulate the flooding of our streets, communities and neighboring countries with dangerous weapons in a manner virtually without precedence in the rest of the world."