A former sheriff’s captain with aspirations to run the department is charged with selling “off roster” guns available only to law enforcement as a way to not only earn money but curry favor with potential donors for the upcoming campaign, according to an indictment unsealed in San Diego federal court Friday.

Federal prosecutors said Marco Garmo, who most recently presided as captain over the Rancho San Diego Station, illegally bought and sold approximately 104 guns over a six-year period, continuing to do so despite being issued formal warnings to curtail his activity.

Garmo, 52, was arrested at his La Mesa home Friday morning and pleaded not guilty to the 23-count indictment. He was released on $100,000 bond, secured by $10,000 cash and the signatures of two family members.

He had been on leave for several months after federal investigators seized dozens of firearms registered to him during searches of his home and office in February, and he retired at the end of September, ending a 27-year career.


His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Four others were indicted alongside Garmo on allegations of helping him carry out the scheme, including two who pleaded guilty Friday to aiding and abetting: sheriff’s Lt. Fred Magana and prominent San Diego jeweler Leo Hamel.

Hamel, a known gun enthusiast who has long advertised his family business on San Diego’s airwaves, was one of Garmo’s most frequent clients, according to authorities.

The illegal sales mostly involved Glocks, Rugers and other handguns, but also included some rifles, as well as high-capacity magazines that purchasers were not allowed to possess under state law, prosecutors said.


Many of them were what are called “off-roster” firearms, which means they can only be sold to law enforcement officers on the primary market. The law does allow law enforcement to resell such firearms in certain circumstances, however excessive sales for profit is considered illegal.

Because the guns were hard to get, Garmo could command a premium price, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Pilchak.

The operation was to turn a profit, prosecutors said, but also “to build good will with future potential donors or benefactors would could advance his career or support anticipated political campaigns, including Garmo’s expressed intention to run for San Diego County sheriff,” according to the indictment.

The indictment says Garmo would regularly transfer guns, high-capacity magazines and ammunition — including Sheriff’s Department-issued ammunition that he was not authorized to distribute — to Hamel, friends and acquaintances in what are known as “straw purchases,” falsely claiming the items were for Garmo when they were not.


Prosecutors said the veteran lawman bought approximately 146 guns between March 2013 and this past February. But over the same period, he transferred approximately 93 of those firearms to third parties through federal firearms licenses and transferred other weapons without going through the federal licensing process, the indictment states.

In some cases Garmo attempted to disguise the sales as loans, according to the indictment.

“I’ll stop by Saturday and drop off the money and pick up the guns,” Hamel emailed Garmo in March of last year. “If you want to hand write a letter stating I am borrowing them that would be good.”

The jeweler added that Garmo’s letter should include a “serial number (but) no date though,” the indictment states.


When investigators searched Hamel’s business and home in February, they seized some 200 firearms — 11 of which were registered to Garmo, authorities said. Hamel has agreed to give up all the guns, as well as 100,000 rounds of ammunition, as part of the plea agreement.

Hamel has been a long-time donor to the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association of San Diego County, the department’s labor group that also operates a store from where Garmo allegedly purchased some of the guns. Hamel had also been previously named an honorary deputy sheriff.

To pull off some of the straw purchases, Garmo used Giovanni Tilotta, a federally licensed El Cajon firearms dealer and owner of Honey Badger Firearms, who accepted and submitted falsified records, according to the indictment. Some of the business deals went down inside Garmo’s office at the Rancho San Diego sheriff’s station, authorities said.

Tilotta is also accused of preparing firearms transfer records ahead of time with personal information of the buyers, so customers could get their hands on the guns without the state’s 10-day waiting period. One of those alleged customers was an unnamed San Diego attorney who bought a Glock .40 caliber pistol, an AR-15-style rifle and a Smith & Wesson handgun in 2016, the indictment states.


Tilotta had not been arrested as of Friday and was considered at large, authorities said.

Magana, who worked under Garmo at the station, helped coordinate sales by offering to advertise the guns to customers — at times asking other deputies to help — and agreed to keep the boss’s name out of the negotiations until the deals were struck, according to his guilty plea. Magana also admitted to two straw purchases of off-roster guns for Hamel at Garmo’s direction.

Magana has been on “paid administrative assignment” since last summer, and effective Friday he was placed on unpaid administrative leave, a sheriff’s spokesman said.

Many of the guns sold by Garmo were handguns that are easily concealable, and Garmo encouraged customers — including an undercover agent — to apply with the Sheriff’s Department for a concealed-carry weapon, or CCW, permit, according to prosecutors. The captain pointed them toward a friend, Waiel “Will” Anton, for help, the indictment says.


Anton, who held himself out to be a CCW “consultant,” is accused of paying a clerk at the sheriff’s licensing division $100 to get clients to the front of the line for CCWs — a wait that would otherwise have been eight to nine months, according to the indictment. He is accused of charging customers $1,000 to $2,000 for the service, and then paying kickbacks to Garmo for the business.

At his arraignment Friday, Anton’s attorney Eugene Iredale said there was nothing illegitimate about consulting on CCWs, and that the $100 was a gift to the ladies at the division “for being nice to him.”

“The intention was that the money be used to buy lunch for everybody,” Iredale told the judge.

Prosecutors declined to discuss the status of the civilian Sheriff’s Department employee. A department spokesman called it a “personnel matter” and declined to comment.


Iredale said his client has worked as a garage door installer for many years and has always wanted to be a law enforcement officer, although he could not pass the tests to be one. He became an honorary deputy sheriff instead, which is how he connected with Garmo.

Prosecutors say Anton also acquired an AK-47 through a Garmo straw purchase.

Anton pleaded not guilty to charges of aiding and abetting and making a false statement, and was expected to be released on a $50,000 bond secured by his wife’s home.

Garmo also faces charges relating to accusations that he warned a cousin who is a partner in an illicit marijuana dispensary in Spring Valley of an impending raid, according to the indictment. The dispensary, Campo Greens, cleaned out their shelves in response, but when Garmo told them the next day that the search had been canceled, the business reopened, authorities said.


Sheriff Bill Gore issued a statement Friday saying he learned about the possible employee misconduct in 2017.

FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Todd Hemmen said at a news conference Friday that the sheriff referred the allegations to the FBI for investigation, and the FBI subsequently brought in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“Acts such as these are a violation of public trust and tarnish the reputation of law enforcement,” Gore’s statement said concerning Garmo and Magana. “I am disappointed by the actions of these two individuals, as they do not reflect the values of this department and its thousands of trustworthy, hard-working employees.”

In 2017, Gore formally reprimanded Garmo after an investigation found that the captain had bought and sold dozens of guns without securing a federal firearms license.


The Union-Tribune reported the investigation and disciplinary action last year.

Garmo said at the time that he was simply a gun hobbyist who was unaware that he needed a federal license to buy and sell so many weapons.

“I’m a gun guy,” Garmo told the newspaper in 2018. “I’m not making excuses. It’s a mistake that’s probably commonly made. My intentions were not to violate the law. The minute it was brought to my attention it stopped happening.”

Gore defended his decision from 2017, saying the punishment fit the misconduct because Garmo did not appear to be selling the guns for profit and apparently had simply overlooked the law that requires people who buy or sell more than five guns a year to have a federal license.


“He played by all the rules, but he did too many (transactions),” Gore said at the time. “They were all registered by the Department of Justice; that’s how we found out about them. We don’t let other people say ignorance of the law is an excuse and that’s why we disciplined him.”

The sheriff’s case was referred to the District Attorney’s Office for possible criminal charges, but then-District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis declined to file charges and instead sent Garmo a letter warning him not to continue violating the law. Around the same time, ATF sent a similar warning to law enforcement agencies after seeing an uptick in such transactions.

Garmo did not heed the warning, according to prosecutors.

“Make no mistake about it, this is not some paper violation, this is not ‘I didn’t know what I was doing,’” said Carlos Canino, special agent in charge of ATF’s Los Angeles division. “This is a classic firearms trafficking case.”


Investigators seized 64 guns registered to Garmo during the Feb. 13 searches, but 27 other firearms are unaccounted for. They said there was no evidence thus far tying any of the guns to violent crimes.