A Facebook user was selling stolen US Army gear, often from a large stash of laser sights, despite Meta’s ban on the sales of such items on its platforms.
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In 2020, former U.S. Army officer Bryan Allen admitted to stealing an estimated $2 million in military equipment from his battalion at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The stolen property included a vast array of weaponry, from grenades and smoke bombs to high-powered lasers and firearms scopes. Most of the loot was never recovered, according to court records reviewed by Forbes. Allen said he had sold it all.
“The defendant’s crime was terribly serious,” Justice Department prosecutors said at the time. “He risked national security and basic public safety for his greed.”
A few years later, a confidential FBI informant told the agency he’d discussed buying a laser sight from a contact on Facebook for $3,250, according to a search warrant and a criminal complaint filed last week. Further investigation found that the owner of that Facebook account was Santa Ana, California resident Arthit Tanjapatkul, who’d acquired more than 260 items stolen by Allen and was selling them online, often using Facebook via its Messenger app, the FBI claimed.
It’s unclear how Allen and Tanjapatkul became acquainted, but PayPal records showed the suspect made approximately 150 payments to Allen totaling around $277,000, between July 2015 and April 2019, investigators said. According to the search warrant, Allen did not recall Tanjapatkul’s name, but did remember selling the weapons to an individual in California, during an interview with investigators at his home in February this year.
“The government searched a storage unit used by Tanjapatkul and found approximately 192 more devices allegedly stolen by Allen ‘and a large volume of suspected child sexual abuse materials.’”
While Meta has clamped down on weapons sales across its sites, dealers continue to use its platforms to advertise and sell guns and gun parts. Forbes recently reported on a DOJ investigation into shootings of teenagers in El Cajon, California, in 2022, where the shooters allegedly bought their guns from a man selling weapons on Instagram. Last year, Forbes found multiple examples of sales of Glock switches, designed to turn pistols into automatic weapons, across Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and Twitter.
Meta declined to comment on the record, but pointed Forbes to its policies that prohibit users from buying or selling firearms and their parts, as well as “lethal enhancements” on its platforms. It also said that it scrutinized all requests for user data to ensure the government was both asking for data pertinent to an investigation and keeping requests as narrow as possible to affect fewer individuals.
As part of its investigation, the FBI seized data from the alleged perpetrator’s Facebook account and found a number of other discussions between Tanjapatkul and potential buyers of various “law enforcement and military equipment,” according to the warrant.
While Tanjapatkul’s bartering with buyers often began on Facebook Messenger before moving to text, the suspect also posted publicly about transactions on his Facebook profile, the DOJ said. “Got a lot of my kit out to adoption today,” read a post on the still-active Facebook account in September last year. “All of those FRENZ and Forever [sic] homes please be patient while I sort out all the tracking and transport.”
A search of Tanjapatkul’s property in October 2023 uncovered at least 71 items believed to have been stolen by Allen, including “aiming lasers, weapon lights, weapon sights, thermal sights, night vision and other accessories,” the FBI said. Investigators also said they’d found dozens of firearms, including four machine guns. According to the criminal complaint against him, the government searched a storage unit used by Tanjapatkul and found approximately 192 more devices allegedly stolen by Allen “and a large volume of suspected child sexual abuse materials.”
According to the complaint against him, Tanjapatkul has not been charged for possessing CSAM, only for unlawful possession of a machine gun. His lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. The Department of Justice told Forbes Tanjapatkul is currently under home detention and declined further comment. It’s unclear if the DOJ has managed to recover any of the other items pilfered and sold on by Allen.
Allen, who was sentenced to just over two years in July 2020, is now out of prison.
