A Du Page County gun dealer who fashioned illegal automatic weapons from military scrap metal was sentenced to nearly 3 1/2 years in prison Friday by a federal judge in Chicago.
U.S. District Judge George Lindberg also ordered Thomas Gibe, 61, of Villa Park to undergo alcohol treatment and banned him from selling war surplus or firearm parts after he completes his 41-month prison term.
Gibe, who had no previous criminal record, pleaded guilty in August to having 10 unregistered machine guns and three silencers.
Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms found more than 250 military-type weapons, including the machine guns, in a raid of an Elmhurst warehouse owned by Gibe in July 1990.
Gibe rebuilt machine guns from military scrap metal in ”a virtual assembly line” at the warehouse and sold them, Assistant U.S. Atty. David Rosenbloom charged.
At Friday`s hearing, Rosenbloom accused Gibe of being indifferent to whether the automatic weapons ended up in the hands of gang members.
Authorities learned of Gibe from Jerry Muzika, 44, a gun collector from Worth, after undercover agents charged Muzika with selling them several illegal weapons for more than $9,000.
Muzika testified that Gibe had sold him the two machine guns, four hand grenades and a silencer for a machine gun.
Muzika pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess and transfer firearms and was sentenced to 5 years of probation by Lindberg.
Jerry Singer, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, emphasized the military-type weapons Gibe reconstructed weren`t collectors` items or used for sport.
”They`re strictly for shooting people or killing people,” Singer said.
