King told jurors the company’s records reflected “somewhere between 900 and 3,000 people” getting Auto Key Cards.ĭuring the trial, prosecutors highlighted email between Ervin and the woman who is now Hoover’s wife, whom Ervin told “your man is one hell of a salesman.” Where Ervin struggled to find customers when he began selling Auto Key Cards in 2020, sales surged dramatically when he began sponsoring installments of Hoover’s CRS Firearms YouTube channel. The trial included testimony from some Auto Key Card clients who said they had not cut the cards they bought but wanted them on hand in case of dystopian emergencies like a breakdown in social order.Ī 12-count indictment finalized last month charged the men with conspiracy and seven counts of illegally distributing unregistered machine-gun conversion devices, as well as three counts for Ervin of possession of unregistered devices and a single banking charge of structuring financial transactions to avoid triggering attention to the account that handled Auto Key Card sales and expenses.Įrvin was first charged in 2021 and Hoover was added as a defendant last year, as prosecutors substituted in new indictments to describe the teamwork that developed between the men. “As long as you do not cut it out … you have not broken the law,” Ervin’s lawyer, Alex King, told the same jury earlier in the afternoon. Attorney Laura Cofer Taylor told jurors Thursday afternoon, shortly before eight women and four men began deliberating.ĭefense attorneys argued the firearms law doesn’t cover their clients because it doesn’t restrict items that could potentially be made into conversion devices but haven’t been yet. “Where is the line? That’s really a question you all will have to face,” Executive Assistant U.S. Sentencing was tentatively scheduled for July 31.Įrvin sold card-shaped strips of stainless steel etched with patterns for equipment colloquially called a “lightning link” that can convert a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle into a fully automatic machine gun that fires round upon round from a single trigger-pull.Īlthough a buyer would have to follow the etched lines with a cutting tool, prosecutors argued the cards qualified as conversion devices, which the federal government treats like machine guns that have to be registered and regulated under the National Firearms Act of 1934. ![]() District Judge Marcia Morales Howard said custody was the default for someone convicted of multiple felonies and declined to make an exception after a hearing where prosecutors raised concerns about safety of trial witnesses and prosecutors, citing hostile comments by visitors to Hoover’s YouTube site. His attorneys asked to continue that or to let him surrender to marshals in Wisconsin. Hoover had been allowed to remain free before the trial and had continued posting YouTube installments, some about his own case.įrom the trial: 'Society is pretty fragile,' client says about buying machine-gun converter from Clay firmįrom the start of the trial: Did Clay County man sell machine-gun parts or tchotchkes? Lawyers argue as trial startsĭefense fundraiser: $116,000 donated for defense in Jacksonville gun trial frozen online. Ervin has been behind bars since his arrest in 2021. ![]() marshals after the verdict was returned Friday. Gun dealer Matthew Hoover, known to many gun enthusiuast through his CRS Firearms channel, was taken into custody by U.S. Jurors found an Orange Park business owner guilty on all counts in a federal trial about marketing thousands of illegal machine-gun conversion devices through a web-based company advertising on YouTube.Ī Wisconsin gun dealer whose gun-centered YouTube channel has 180,000 subscribers was convicted of conspiracy with Auto Key Card owner Kristopher “Justin” Ervin as well as four counts of transferring the unregistered devices.
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