News brief: Ex-cop gets prison for illegal gun show sales

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

A former Bremerton police officer was sentenced today to two years in federal prison in a case that included undercover agents purchasing guns from him and others at gun shows in Centralia and Puyallup.

Roy Alloway, 56, pleaded guilty last fall to unlawful dealing in firearms and filing a false income tax return.

Alloway was warned twice in 2005, but continued to purchase and sell guns without a federal firearms license; much of his conduct occurred while he was an active police officer, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Western District of Washington.

He was one of four men charged last May following a lengthy undercover investigation into illegal sales at gun shows, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorneys Office.

The (Tacoma) News Tribune reports 77 of the firearms were seized in drug raids in which Alloway was either a participant or an insider with direct access to the weapons.

Some of the guns Alloway bought and sold later turned up at the scenes of a robbery, two assaults and in the hands of two felons, according to prosecutors.

“It was a breach of trust,” U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton said at sentencing. “It was not a technical violation; it was a total abdication of his responsibilities under the law.”

Alloway deposited cash, checks and money orders into his bank account totaling about $192,000 from the sale of firearms, according to the news release. However he failed to declare that income on his tax returns. As part of his plea agreement, he has agreed to pay all back taxes, according to the news release.

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Read a story with further details about Alloway from yesterday’s issue of The (Tacoma) News Tribune, here

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