MONTREAL—A Montreal factory owner has been found guilty of illegally manufacturing pistol-sized submachine-guns — some of which were used by Toronto criminals — after claiming in court he thought he was making paintball guns.

“It had to look as real as possible,” Jean-Pierre Huot, 61, owner of Perfection Metal Inc., testified in court.

Huot was found guilty by a jury on Saturday of six counts of making prohibited firearms and silencers. He was acquitted of two charges of possession of an unloaded weapon with easily accessible ammunition.

Between 2014 and 2018, Montreal police connected more than 30 of the illegal TEC-9-style guns produced by Perfection Metal to major investigations. Eighteen of the guns were found at crime scenes throughout Quebec and Ontario, including four in the GTA, a Crown attorney told the Montreal Superior Court.

A La Presse investigation found that some of those crimes included murders and attempted murders involving outlaw bikers and mobsters.

One of the semi-automatic assault guns was used in the Nov. 13, 2016, robbery of a brothel on Bonis Ave. in Scarborough, near Sheppard Ave. E. and Birchmont Rd., according to Quebec court documents.

Huot argued at his month-long trial that he intended only to make imitation guns for paintball.

If lethal weapons were manufactured by his company rather than paintball guns, it was done without his knowledge, Huot testified. He told court, “I have too big fingers and I do not have the dexterity to assemble a TEC-9,” and added, “For me, paintball, there is nothing criminal.”

Court heard the handguns were capable of firing a blast of 32 bullets and were equipped with silencers to muffle the sound of gunshots.

No one was injured in the Scarborough brothel robbery, in which seven people were ordered to the floor at gunpoint, court documents state. The heist netted two robbers two cellphones, $650 in cash and a jacket worth $2,400.

A witness, who was not identified in court, testified Huot told him the guns required silencers “because the customers were playing paintball at night and did not want the guns to make too much flash and noise.”

The same witness testified Perfection Metal made about five dozen of the guns between 2013 and 2014.

The La Presse investigation found one of the guns was used in the unsolved murder of a mobster who was a bitter enemy of the late Vito Rizzuto, a Montreal Mob boss with influence across Ontario.

Rizzuto died in December 2013, reportedly of cancer — although questions remain about his death.

Company executive Pierre Larivière, 63, was also charged with possession and manufacture of prohibited weapons and possession of prohibited firearms without the necessary licences and registration. Larivière was found not guilty of all charges.

The case was heard by Superior Court Justice France Charbonneau, who chaired a long-running public inquiry that found corruption was widespread in Quebec’s construction industry.

According to court documents, Huot told police that the guns sold for $800 each.

The trial heard that one of the guns was used in the unsolved murder of Montreal gang leader Ducarme Joseph, a foe of Rizzuto, on Aug. 1, 2014.

Joseph was shot several times in the head in northeast Montreal. Two of the knock-off TEC-9-type guns were found at the murder scene, along with three dozen cartridges.

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One of the guns found by police was used in the murder of convicted sex offender Mario Bourgeois, who was shot several times outside a halfway house in the east Montreal neighbourhood of Rosemont on Feb. 11, 2015, according to the La Presse investigation. The submachine-gun used to kill Bourgeois was found in the snow near the scene; that murder also remains unsolved.

Another of the assault pistols was used in the unsolved May 6, 2014, murder of biker Richard Rousseau, 50, of the Blatnois Motorcycle Club, which is connected to the Hells Angels, La Presse found.

Rousseau was travelling in a wheelchair when he was shot dead in the suburb of Terrebonne.