Federal Agents Tight-Lipped About Bluff City Raid
By Michael Owens
Reporter / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: April 2, 2009
BLUFF CITY, Tenn. – The federal police raid of a house here Wednesday morning might be connected to alleged attempts by active duty Marines to sell stolen military night-vision scopes in Hawaii.
Linked to the home at 288 Jonesboro Drive is Lance Cpl. Ronald William Abram, 20, who faces federal charges of conspiring to sell eight scopes to a Hong Kong buyer for $20,000. His father, Ronnie Abram, lives at the house, according to directory listings.
So far, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has remained tight-lipped about the reasons for the search. A department spokesman, citing the search as part of an open investigation, refused to comment.
More than 20 officers from ICE, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Navy Criminal Investigative Service, the U.S. Marshals Service, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Tennessee Highway Patrol stormed the two-story house at 9 a.m. They arrived in cars, vans and SUVs sporting license plates from Louisiana, Illinois and Tennessee.
Also there were local firefighters, who helped officers crack open a knee-high safe with pneumatic shears, called the “Jaws of Life,” which are primarily used to pry people from wrecked cars. Pulled from inside the safe was a small, wooden box.
One federal official, spotted through the open front door, sat at the living room computer typing and reading.
NCIS spokesman Ed Buice confirmed that some evidence was seized, but declined to elaborate. No arrests were made, he added.
“Hopefully, we can talk more about it in the future,” he said.
The Bristol Herald Courier could not reach family members. Ronnie Abram’s phone has been disconnected, and calls to other family members were not returned.
Wednesday’s raid was not the first time that Ronald William Abram drew law enforcement officers to his parents’ Jonesboro Drive home. The Herald Courier earlier reported that a domestic dispute call brought officers there on April 3, 2007. At the time, Ronald William Abram was on leave from his base at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.
Bluff City Police officers, while attempting to sort out the evening’s events, handcuffed a drunk Ronald William Abram and left him in the back of a police cruiser. He somehow dismantled a radar antenna inside the cruiser and used it to scratch the Plexiglas barrier between the front and rear seats, police said.
The Marine eventually pleaded guilty to public intoxication and was fined $50. But prosecutors dropped the charges of vandalism and underage drinking under assurance that the Marine Corp. would deal with the behavior, the Herald Courier reported.
Last July, he again landed on authorities’ radar when ICE agents uncovered a scheme to sell stolen night vision scopes on the Internet auction site eBay, according to federal indictments filed at the U.S. District Court in Honolulu. The eBay ad eventually led them to Hawaii and six Marines stationed there.
By September 2008, undercover agents bought eight scopes in a sting that indictments state netted the arrests of Ronald Abram and five others, including Abingdon, Va., native Cpl. Mark Allen Vaught. Agents traced the scopes, which had the serial numbers filed off, to a Marine base.
Honolulu-based Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris A. Thomas said by telephone that Ronald William Abram and two others have decided to fight the charges in civilian federal court. Vaught and three others will allow a military court to hear their cases, he said.
mowens@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2549
Source: http://www.tricities.com/tri/news/local/article/federal_agents_tight-lipped_about_bluff_city_raid/22508/
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