HARTFORD, Conn. — A Dominican and French citizen who lives in Dominica has been sentenced to 66 months in federal prison for smuggling firearms, gun parts and ammunition from the United States to the Caribbean island, the U.S. attorney's office in Connecticut said Wednesday.

Dimitri Beix, 29, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Vernon D. Oliver in Hartford. He pleaded guilty on Aug. 4 to conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act, which requires a license from the U.S. Department of Commerce to export such items.

According to prosecutors, from at least January 2021 through September 2024, Beix led a scheme that relied on a network of suppliers, buyers and shippers in Connecticut and elsewhere in the country. He gave his U.S. suppliers lists of gun parts to buy for him on eBay and from other retailers, prosecutors said, and used his own eBay accounts to buy more than 100 gun parts himself, having them shipped to people in the United States. The guns and parts were then sent on to him in Dominica.

In February 2023, authorities in Dominica intercepted three parcels shipped from the United States to Beix, prosecutors said. They held six handguns, Glock slides, trigger and sight assemblies, rifle and pistol magazines, rifle parts, a suppressor kit, ammunition and other gun components.

Beix was arrested in Sint Maarten at the request of the United States on Nov. 27, 2024, and has been held since. He was extradited to the United States in February, prosecutors said.

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