Federal authorities have accused a man from Baltimore of selling guns to an undercover federal agent out of his Utz Potato Chips stall at Lexington Market.
Between September 2007 and last month, 53-year-old Michael Papantonakis sold without a license several guns and rifles to an informant with MS-13 ties and an undercover agent posing as his gang-member friend, court documents said. Papantonakis is being held without bail.
But Papantonakis’ attorney Joseph Evans said in court documents that his client was selling his private gun collection to a longtime friend and a man posing as his friend’s friend. In Maryland it’s legal to sell a private gun collection without a license, and federal law makes the same exception.
The informant’s relationship with Papantonakis goes back more than two decades, and he had unrequited romantic interests in Papantonakis’ sister, Evans wrote.
“It’s not clear that he committed a crime,” Evans told The Examiner.
U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar wrote in his order to hold Papantonakis without bail that the “weight of evidence against the defendant is not overwhelming.” But, Bredar wrote, Papantonakis should be held because of threats of violence made by his family against the informant.
Evans argued that Papantonakis should be released. Papantonakis’ sister, Evans wrote, did call the informant, but only to express her outrage over the informant’s “betrayal of the Papantonakis family.”
It was the informant who set the investigation in motion by calling a Baltimore police detective and telling him that Papantonakis was selling guns from his potato chip stand, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Task Force Officer James Bradley wrote in a sworn statement.
Over the course of 18 months, the informant bought guns from Papantonakis and Papantonakis’ girlfriend, Bradley wrote. Eventually, the informant introduced the undercover agent to Papantonakis, opening the door for Papantonakis to sell guns directly to the agent.
Although Evans said the guns came strictly from Papantonakis’ private collection, he was heard telling the informant in a recordedconversation about a future shipment from a supplier.
“You know they go quick,” Papantonakis reportedly told the informant. “We’re real used to selling to Bloods and Crips.”
