Gun dealer sentenced for stealing police identities in order to sell illegal firearms

A former federal arms dealer and gun-control advocate from Placer County who was accused of stealing private information from police clients in a ploy to sell illegal weapons was sentenced to four years in federal prison, prosecutors said Thursday.

Joseph John Deaser IV, 54, faced up to 20 years after he pleaded guilty in May 2019 to 10 counts involving mail fraud, aggravated identity theft, and false entries and illegal sales as a federal firearms license dealer, The Sacramento Bee previously reported.

California has an approved roster of guns to be sold to the general public under state law. Guns not listed are prohibited unless the buyer is a sworn peace officer. It’s a federal firearms licensee’s job to uphold and enforce that policy, authorities said.

Deaser, who owns and runs a members-only gun club in Roseville, masked the sales of at least 50 off-roster handguns to non-law enforcement customers between December 2014 and April 2018 by attributing the purchases to six officers who bought firearms through the business legitimately, according to court records.

To document each purchase, Deaser stole officers’ names, IDs, and other personal information to fill out the transaction forms — even going as far as to use his middle finger to fake the required fingerprint signatures, according to court documents.

According to a news release from U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California, Deaser is a public proponent for regulating the sale and use of firearms through universal background checks and testified before federal and state legislatures for this reason.

U.S. District Judge Troy L. Nunley, who handed down Deaser’s sentence in a Sacramento courtroom, deemed the behavior an abuse of the defendant’s power as a federally licensed firearms dealer.

“I think it’s totally acceptable to, on the one hand, look at the things he’s done, but on the other hand, look at the life he was living behind the scenes,” Nunley said. “On the one hand, he was … advocating for sensible gun laws before Congress, before local governments, before organizations, and on the other side of it, he was trying to circumvent those very same gun laws.”

This story was originally published August 5, 2021 at 5:07 PM.