A 20-year-old Montgomery County man has been charged in a scheme to sell military equipment stolen from Yellowstone National Park to buyers overseas.
Prosecutors said the conspiracy was discovered during an investigation of the theft of several high-powered rifles from a Montana sporting goods store in 2009.
The new charges come a month after a Montana judge sentenced Connor Hayden Kraegel, of Poolesville, to 15 months after he pleaded guilty to burglarizing a federal firearms licensee.
Now Kraegel, a former Montana State University student, faces new charges in Maryland for conspiracy to export arms and munitions and unlawful export of arms and munitions. He faces up to 20 years more in prison.
What was Kraegel selling? Aviation night-vision goggles.
According to The Bozeman Daily Chronicle in Montana, investigators got a tip from a man who saw a flyer on a Montana State University bulletin board advertising two guns for sale. The man was also an employee at Bob Ward & Sons Sporting Goods store, and recognized the items as the firearms that had been stolen from the store in February 2009.
Police arrested Kraegel and found body armor and a pair of night-vision goggles, authorities said. He admitted to detectives that he had stolen the items from the Yellowstone National Park where he was a volunteer, documents said.
According to new charging documents, in 2009 Kraegel placed some of the goggles on eBay and sold six of them to buyers in Germany, Norway and Denmark for between $2,900 and $4,100 each. The night-vision equipment is classified by the federal government as “articles of war” and require an arms dealership license to sell abroad, charging documents said.
To get around the law, Kraegel falsely stated on mailing documents what items were being shipped, prosecutors said.
During the period when the goggles were apparently sold, Kraegel was a senior at Poolesville High School, where he was a member of the track team and the lacrosse team that won the Montgomery County championship.
A phone message seeking comment at his home in Poolesville was not returned.
