A Garden Grove man who works as a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer at Los Angeles International Airport was arrested last week on charges of international arms trafficking.
Wilfredo Maralit has company: his brother, Rex-Gene Maralit, a New York City police officer, was also arrested by federal agents and there were attempts to pop a third brother, Arial Maralit, in the Philippines.
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According to federal prosecutors, the three conspired to export high-powered weapons
from the U.S. to the Philippines without a license from the U.S. State Department. They are charged with federal counts of doing that as well as conspiring to engage in unlicensed firearms dealing.
Their alleged scheme was executed between January 2009 through March of this year, according to the feds, who are expected to try the case against the brothers in New York.
They could get five years in prison and $250,000 fines with convictions.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.