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Sabotage began in July of that year after the force entered into a contract with the agent, with investigators telling him to entrench himself into the gang world.

Photo by David Kawai / Ottawa Citizen

During the project, the agent bought guns and drugs in 21 separate transactions.

Wiretaps made it so cops could intercept the communications between the agent and people he spoke to. Police could also covertly film any of the transactions.

Kempffer-Hossack only became known to police through a broker who set up six buys for the agent, three of which were for Kempffer-Hossack’s guns.

Kempffer-Hossack sold a semi-automatic handgun, 12-gauge shotgun and a rifle on three separate occasions in the fall of 2017.

In one meeting at a McDonald’s, he slid a black duffel bad under the table and took a McDonald’s bag full of cash over the table.

The duffel bag contained a handgun with “no identifiable markings,” Neubauer said.

The broker would tell the agent before handing it over in the agent’s car: “Don’t burn it too much, don’t squeeze it too much. You can tell this guy made it by hand.”

OPS firearms experts ruled it unsafe to fire the gun and sent it out for forensic testing, which found it could and did fire.

Weeks later, the broker would send the agent a string of text messages asking if he wants an “all-black” pistol-grip, pump-action shotgun “like some SWAT s–t”. The asking price: $2,000.

The broker would pay Kempffer-Hossack at a St-Hubert restaurant in Gatineau, then later turn the gun over to the agent. The serial number on it had been ground out.