A Wisconsin man has agreed to plead guilty in a scheme to ship illegal guns to an Australian weapons dealer using a crate with a false floor to skirt customs officials.

Andy Lloyd Huebschmann of New Holstein pleaded guilty in federal court filings Friday to sending the Australian dealer pistols, rifles and rifle parts to convert semi-automatic guns into fully automatic weapons.

Huebschmann is the former owner of Thureon Defense LLC and is licensed to manufacture and deal guns, according to the plea agreement. He met Paul Munro of Australia at a Las Vegas gun trade show about seven years ago and Munro persuaded him to ship him Thureon guns under the radar.

Munro has been sentenced to 10 years in Australian prison for his role in the scheme, according to news reports from the country. Officials at his sentencing hearing said dozens of Thureon-imported guns, including some fully automatic weapons, remained on Australian streets.

To carry out the scheme, Munro and others constructed a shipping crate with a secret compartment under the floor in which to pack the guns and rifle parts and delivered it to the Thureon offices, according to the plea agreement.

Between 2013 and 2016 Huebschmann shipped Munro rifle kits with parts for semi-automatic or fully automatic triggers, frames and slides that could be assembled into full pistols and other weapons. He did not have export licenses for the shipments.

In one shipment Munro paid $1,000 for each rifle kit and $2,000 for a pack of pistol slides and frames. Australian news outlets report he, in turn, sold the rifles for $15,000 each and the pistols for $5,000 a piece.

Then in 2015, Munro asked Huebschmann to start manufacturing the guns without any serial numbers or “Thureon” branding — he worried Australian law enforcement was onto him, the plea agreement states.

The weapons dealing would soon end.

“In 2016, Australian law enforcement recovered a Huebschmann-manufactured fully-automatic machine gun after it was used in a high-profile armed robbery,” the plea agreement reads.

And according to Australian news outlets, authorities arrested Munro after he set up a deal in August 2016 to sell guns to an undercover officer.

Huebschmann’s next court hearing is set for Aug. 5. The maximum sentence for his charge — violating the Arms Export Control Act — is 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

Contact Sophie Carson at (414) 223-5512 or scarson@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @SCarson_News.