Elias Ahki had made the same promise before.
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“I don’t expect to be seeing you again,” Superior Court Justice Kelly Gorman told Akhi, 31, who was sentenced to a total of 14 years in prison for masterminding an expansive gun-smuggling scheme.
“Never again,” Akhi said from the prisoner’s box.
Coincidentally, Akhi uttered the same words – “Never again, ma’am. Never again” – in April 2022 to Superior Court Justice Kelly Tranquilli when she sentenced him to two years time served after he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of robbery with violence in planning a gunpoint heist and kidnapping at a southwest London home in 2016.
Fourteen months later, on June 20, 2023, Akhi was arrested and pegged as the directing mind of an elaborate plot to smuggle guns from Ohio to Ontario.
Akhi pleaded guilty Monday to directing the import and export of guns as part of a criminal organization, importing firearms and conspiring to traffic in firearms with twice-incarcerated murderer William McDonald.
London police dubbed the scheme Project Pistachio, a local gun-running ring that was part of a wider probe involving several law enforcement agencies that led to 70 arrests and more than 500 charges in summer 2023.
“I want to say I’m sorry to the community for what I’ve done and for the firearms I trafficked,” Akhi said to Gorman.
“I’ve met a lot of people in jail who lost family members, who lost their good fathers, related to gun violence. I’m just very sorry. I destroyed myself. I destroyed my family. I just want to apologize for my actions.”
An agreed statement of facts, filed by assistant Crown attorney Meredith Gardiner, outlined how Ahki’s supervisory role was discovered after a handgun was hidden among some pistachios.
In February 2023, London police were seeking a man wanted for breaching probation. He was seen driving a white Honda and pulling into a variety store parking lot.
As officers followed him into the store, store surveillance cameras caught him taking a loaded Glock semi-automatic handgun with a prohibited magazine out of his hoodie pocket and stashing it in a display of pistachio nuts at the front counter.
Police searched the Honda and found a black satchel in the passenger seat containing 35 grams of cocaine, $2,555, a SIM card and two cellphones. In the trunk was a Nike bag containing eight empty handguns and magazines.
London police traced all the guns to Ohio, with two of them purchased about a month earlier by the same man. They also searched the cellphones and found Akhi “was the directing mind of a criminal organization the purpose of which was to acquire firearms in the United States and smuggle them into Canada for illegal sale,” the agreed statement of facts said.
Investigators pieced together texts, photos and audio messages shared by group members that outlined how the organization operated.
In September 2022, Akhi recruited the man caught hiding the gun in the pistachios to find someone with dual Canadian-U.S. citizenship who could get an Ohio driver’s licence, then start buying guns to smuggle. A willing participant was found, entered the U.S. Nov. 12, 2022, and had an Ohio licence by Dec. 10, 2022.
Between Jan. 1 and 19, 2023, the pair bought 50 restricted and prohibited handguns with money and direction from Akhi and the pistachio man. The gun buyers moved them to Malone, N.Y., using an Uber ride share, rented a motel room and Akhi had another man pick up the guns and take them across the border to Canada in suitcases.
The group smuggled three loads totalling 150 guns into Canada between January and April 2023, the statement of facts said. Akhi continued to traffic in guns until his arrest two months later.
He not only helped create the criminal organization, but he also was the primary funder via wire, bank and electronic transfers and personal cash deliveries. He told buyers how much they could spend on hotels and transport, which guns to buy, where and for how much, and arranged to smuggle the guns back to Ontario.
Included in the agreed statements of facts were text conversations between Akhi and McDonald, who is in Collins Bay penitentiary. Akhi listed the handguns he had available and discussed a potential buyer McDonald had in mind.
Jail guards seized a smuggled cellphone, charging block and charging cable from McDonald in May 2023. He has since pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years to be served with his life sentence.
Akhi’s 14-year sentence was a joint Crown and defence submission. He received 38 months of enhanced credit for his pre-plea custody.
Defence lawyer Christian Angelini said London-born Akhi comes from a supportive family and his parents were in the courtroom. He also plans to marry.
“That bodes well for his prospects for rehabilitation,” he said. “When his sentence is ultimately served, he will be returning to the same loving and supportive family who are going to help him get back on his feet, one step at a time.”
Ahki was ordered not to communicate with a long list of people, some of them in federal prison. Angelini asked Gorman for exceptions to the non-association order so Ahki could serve his sentence in Ontario.
Gorman wouldn’t consent, but said she could recommend he stay in Ontario to be close to his parents.
Gorman also offered Akhi some advice. “What I don’t understand, Mr. Akhi, is that often I look out into the courtroom when I’m sentencing someone and there’s no one behind the prisoner’s box. You have the benefit of your parents, who obviously love and support you.
“I don’t think you’re a dumb man,” she said. “This was a complicated scheme. But you’re a young man. Keep your head down in the institution, do your time. Don’t get into further trouble, stay in touch with your parents.
“When you get out, you’ll have your whole life ahead of you.”