Lawrencium Germaine Martin was good at cheating people who sent him millions of dollars to buy his gun kits for brand name weapons from an online store he set up on the internet, according to federal prosecutors and agents.. Hundreds of his customers paid and got nothing.
And the 46-year-old Chester resident deliberately avoided paying some $800,000 in taxes to the IRS on $2 million in gun kit sales he made in 2020.
Wednesday, at the Columbia federal courthouse, Martin pleaded guilty to three felony charges: tax evasion, felon in possession of a firearm and lying to a federal agent. He is now looking up to 20 years in federal prison. Judge Joe Anderson accepted the plea.
Ironically, the feds didn’t bring fraud charges against Martin for apparently not mailing hundreds, maybe thousands, of gun kits to people from around the country who ordered them from his online store.
Once the FBI served a search warrant on his Chester business and residence in July 2021, agents realized from looking at his financial records that he didn’t pay any state or federal taxes, according to court records and evidence in the case aired at the Wednesday hearing.
At Martin’s house, agents also found a 9 millimeter Sig Sauer pistol, a weapon that was illegal for him to possess since he was a convicted felon. Also, in his initial interview with the FBI, he lied by telling agents he never had heard of his gun kit store, Lancaster Tactical Supply.
Gun kits consist of parts of a handgun a buyer can easily assemble after drilling a few holes in the gun parts, federal prosecutor Elliott Daniels told Judge Anderson at the hearing.
Because gun kit sellers are not selling actual guns, they don’t have to register with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and become a licensed federal firearms dealer. Many guns made from kits lack serial numbers and are untraceable.
Prices of gun kits on the internet range from several hundred dollars to more than $1,000. Martin advertised he was selling gun kits for Sig Sauer and Ruger handguns on a site called Lancaster Tactical Supply, or ltacticalsupply.com. The site has been deactivated.
The case came to federal attention after the Better Business Bureau in Charlotte received 366 complaints from customers about Martin’s gun kit selling business. The S.C. Department of Consumer Affairs also received complaints, Daniels said at the hearing. The agencies forwarded the complaints to the FBI.
After Martin’s customers sent money to the company and received nothing in return, “They were out of their money, and they were out the product they paid for,” Daniels told the judge.
Martin’s prior felonies included burglary third degree and breaking and entering, Daniels said at the hearing.
Although Martin pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 2020, his attorney told the judge that although everyone agreed it was a “substantial” amount of unpaid taxes, the figure is likely less than $800,000.
“I do believe we need some accounting done,” said Martin’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Jenny Smith.
Anderson said both sides can review the evidence and present any differing views on the amount of unpaid taxes at a future sentencing hearing.
The sentencing hearing date has not been set, but will likely be in two or three months, Anderson said.
In a bond hearing later Wednesday, Smith told Magistrate Judge Paige Jones Gossett that Martin is a reliable person and will show up at future hearings.
“He’s never been convicted of a violent crime. He is married, he has children,” Smith said, adding that Martin’s bank accounts have all been frozen and he lacks access to cash.
Gossett then set a $25,000 unsecured bond on Martin. That means he didn’t have to put up any money, but will be liable to being sued by the federal government if he does not appear for future court dates.
An unusual twist that surfaced during Wednesday’s hearings was that Martin was an innocent bystander who was shot and wounded in a Taco Bell drive-through line in Chester during a May 2021 shooting spree by a fugitive wanted for murder. That information could be used at the future sentencing hearing by defense attorney Smith to explain why he might have had a weapon — for protection — at his house.
Besides the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the IRS Criminal Investigation unit participated in the investigation.
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