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A Barrett .50 caliber rifle is displayed during a news conference at the Homeland Security Investigations Miami Field Office (HSI), Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2022, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)/Inset: Webb County Sheriff booking photos for Gerardo Rafael Perez Jr. and Antonio Osiel Casarez, two of several defendants accused of engaging in a conspiracy to traffic guns such as the Barret .50 caliber.

A Barrett .50 caliber rifle is displayed during a news conference at the Homeland Security Investigations Miami Field Office (HSI), Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2022, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky). Inset: Webb County Sheriff booking photos for Gerardo Rafael Perez Jr. and Antonio Osiel Casarez, two of several defendants accused of engaging in a conspiracy to traffic guns such as the Barret .50 caliber.

Federal prosecutors have arrested group of men who allegedly engaged in a sprawling conspiracy to traffic high-powered military-grade rifles from points all over Texas before smuggling them over the border to drug cartels eager to use them in battles over power and territory.

On Monday, the Justice Department announced it had arrested five men in the Lone Star State on a number of gun trafficking charges. On March 20, they arrested accused conspiracy leader Gerardo Rafael Perez Jr., the group’s alleged money man Luis Matias Leal, known to his compatriots as “Wicho,” “Poncho” or sometimes “El Tio”; Francisco “Frankie” Alejandro Benavides, Mark Anthony Trevino Jr., and alleged smuggler Antonio Osiel Casarez.

The men were added to an existing indictment on March 6, court records show, where co-defendants and alleged straw-purchasers and/or smugglers Jose Emigdio Q. Mendoza, Gerardo Antonio Ibarra Jr. and Gerardo Corona, Jr. Mendoza, were already facing a raft of felony charges.

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