ATF raided a kitchen-table FFL dealer and took $50k to $60k worth of his personal firearms. The ATF claimed, without evidence, Russell Fincher he was making too much money from sales at gun shows and accused him of using his FFL to sell guns personally. Fincher was not charged with any crime or told what specific law he violated:
“After ATF’s SWAT team cleared Fincher’s home, they called the agent in charge of the raid – Special Agent Theodore Mongell – and told him it was ‘safe to come up.’
‘You’re done. We have to shut you down,’ Fincher recalls Mongell saying. ‘You tell all your FFL buddies we are coming for them. We are shutting the gun shows down…’
Toward the end of the ordeal, Fincher asked Mongell about his guns they had seized.
‘He told me, ‘If you’re willing to forfeit them, we can make a lot of this go away,’’ Fincher said. ‘This sounds to me like a shakedown. They seized my guns as punitive damage. They knew how to get me, by taking all my guns. There was no rhyme nor reason to what they took. Honestly, they took the most expensive and rarest ones.’”