“Untraceable ghost guns pose a serious threat to public safety,” said Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, in a statement announcing the charges. He added that Mr. Alcantara’s “deadly ghost gun business has been shut down.”

Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for Mr. Williams, said Mr. Alcantara was ordered detained by a federal magistrate judge in Providence, and he is expected eventually to be sent to Manhattan to face the potential charges and a trial.

In the federal complaint, prosecutors said that the ghost gun parts Mr. Alcantara purchased included the lower receiver or frame of a pistol, which houses the trigger and the magazine, and the upper receiver or “slide.”

They said a search of Mr. Alcantara’s cellphone turned up photographs that appeared to show he has been making “substantial numbers” of ghost guns at his Providence home.

One photo showed a sanding belt, a hydraulic drill press and other tools used in assembling the guns, and five finished ghost guns. Another photo depicted the finished guns each with a logo of a ghost gun manufacturer. A third photograph showed eight more firearms that appear to be packaged for shipment or sale, the complaint said.

The complaint said the phone also contained a conversation between Mr. Alcantara and a representative of a ghost gun retailer, in which Mr. Alcantara discussed purchasing kits for large numbers of ghost guns and how to pay for them.

In one conversation in November, he talked about buying a large number of ghost gun kits from a retailer at the gun show in Morgantown, according to the complaint, which was signed by Kiran Mathew, a special agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The government said Mr. Alcantara also told the authorities after his arrest that he had a YouTube channel on which he discussed firearms. One YouTube video shows Mr. Alcantara saying that he had a firearm created with parts from a ghost gun manufacturer, the complaint said. In the video, he successfully fires the ghost gun.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/06/nyregion/rhode-island-man-ghost-guns-arrested.html