A Somers Point man jailed in March after drugs intercepted by Homeland Security led to a cache of weapons inside his home has pleaded guilty in federal court.
Michael John James, 30, pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing unregistered machine guns and other firearms, as defined under the National Firearms Act, U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger announced Tuesday.
James had been in the Atlantic County Justice Facility since March, after Homeland Security found two FedEx packages were filled with pills sent from South Africa to his home, according to the affidavit previously reported by BreakingAC.
A search of his Colwick Drive home led to 82 firearms, explosives and fireworks along with even more drugs, according to the charges.
At a detention hearing before Superior Court Judge Patricia Wild shortly after his arrest, the defense claimed James was a gun collector with a license to carry and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives permit.
"This was not a collector," Wild said at the time. "This was a person who was amassing both an armory and a drug store, frankly."
Assistant Atlantic County Prosecutor Allison Eiselen painted a picture of a man who had turned his home into "his armed fortress" with dangerous mixes of chemicals "strewn about" in unsafe conditions and a surveillance system that was next to a room with "racks of long guns (and) ammunition."
A federal charge was announced in May.
Among the recovered items were three operable machine guns, an operable weapon modified to be shorter than a standard rifle, an operable weapon modified to be shorter than a standard shotgun, and three silencers, according to the federal charge.
James admitted that he possessed all of the items recovered from his residence. He also admitted that these machine guns and other firearms were operable when he possessed them.
The charge carries a maximum of 10 years in prison and a fine of as much as $250,000. James is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 30.
