Blue Ash Gun Dealer Pleads Guilty to Manufacturing Firearms Without a License, Making False Entries on Dealer Records
CINCINNATI – The owner of a Blue Ash gun shop pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court today to manufacturing firearms without a license, selling them, and knowingly reporting sales incorrectly on federal firearms forms.
Limin Ye, 53, of Blue Ash, Ohio, who owns and operates Opticzoom and Limin Sports Gun Shop, pleaded guilty to one count of engaging in the business of manufacturing firearms without a license and one count of aiding and abetting making false entry in records by a federal firearms dealer.
Terms of Ye’s plea agreement require her to forfeit more than 520 firearms and firearm receiver frames, surrender her federal firearms license, and not to apply or reapply for a federal firearms license. That prohibition applies to any business entity with which she is associated, either legally or in fact.
According to court documents, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Industry Operations Investigators (IOI) conducted a compliance inspection at Opticzoom on Jan. 26 and found 71 lower receivers that Ye had manufactured into firearms, as well as a large stock of firearms parts and lower receivers that could be used to manufacture firearms. The inspectors told Ye that she was not allowed to sell the firearms she built because she did not have a federal firearms manufacturing license.
Yet three days later, an undercover agent went to the Dayton Gun Show and purchased two illegally manufactured firearms from Ye, who was a vendor at the show. Ye instructed one of her employees to list the purchase on the ATF 4473 transfer form as just “receivers” or the lower portion of a firearm instead of accurately listing the purchase as pistols.
Further investigation determined that Ye had been manufacturing firearms without a license since April 2021.
Manufacturing firearms without a license is punishable by up to five years in prison. False entry is punishable by up to one year in prison.
Kenneth L. Parker, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio; and Daryl S. McCormick, Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), announced the plea entered today before U.S. District Judge Douglas R. Cole. Assistant United States Attorney Ashley N. Brucato is representing the United States in this case.
