OCALA, FLORIDA —An Army Supply Sergeant who believed he was selling stolen military equipment worth more than $150,000 to Mexican drug traffickers is facing up to 10 years in prison, officials said.
Luis Rafael Infantes, 21, Elizabethtown, Kentucky, plead guilty to theft of government property. He is facing up to 10 years in federal prison.
Infantes’s father, Pedro Luis Infantes, previously entered a guilty plea to the same charge. The older Infantes is scheduled to be sentenced in January.
According to the plea agreement, on July 11, 2014, Infantes and his father unwittingly met with a confidential source who was working in cooperation with law enforcement.
Infantes and his father believed that the source had connections to potential buyers affiliated with Mexican drug trafficking organizations, officials said.
Ultimately, authorities said Infantes and his father negotiated a sale price of $153,500 for 17 military-grade, thermal- imaging monoculars, rifle cleaning kits, and other assorted military equipment that had been stolen from the government.
When the father later attempted to complete the transaction, he was arrested and interviewed by the FBI, officials said.
Officials said the father provided false statements to agents about how he had acquired the military items and how the serial numbers on the items had been removed. Pedro Luis Infantes stated that he had purchased the equipment in that condition at assorted gun shows.
Authorities, however, said Luis Rafael Infantes, an active-duty supply sergeant for the United States Army, had stolen the items from the Fort Knox military installation.
The case was investigated by the FBI.