Howard County Man Pleads Guilty To Illegal Export Of Firearms To Ghana

HOWARD COUNTY, MD — A 41-year-old Columbia man has pleaded guilty to the illegal export of firearms.

According to his guilty plea, since 2017 Eric Nana Kofi Ampong Coker had purchased at least 81 firearms from three separate Maryland federal firearms licensees and in 2019 received regulated firearms collector status through the Maryland State Police, which waived the restriction on the number of firearms he could purchase during a 30-day period.

As detailed in the plea agreement, investigators also determined that prior to 2021 Ampong Coker shipped passenger vehicles to Ghana. In May 2021, federal agents saw Ampong Coker retrieve firearms purchased from one of the FFLs and was then seen in a variety of locations, including a business that packaged and shipped items from the Port of Baltimore.

A shipping vehicle was subsequently seen leaving that location on May 27, 2021. On May 29, 2021, Ampong Coker was searched as he was leaving the United States from Detroit, Michigan, bound for Ghana. Among other items seized in his luggage were foam cutouts used for packaging and securing firearms in gun cases.

In early June 2021, federal agents identified a shipping container scheduled to depart the Port of Baltimore for Tema, Ghana, on June 14, 2021. Included in the listed contents of the container was a 2018 Toyota Corolla registered to Ampong Coker. The list of contents of the container did not include any firearms.

On June 8, 2021, agents searched the contents of the shipping container. Within the trunk of the 2018 Toyota Corolla, which had Ampong Coker’s name on cardboard on top of the vehicle, the agents found a grey suitcase. Secreted in the lining of the suitcase, the agents found five 9mm handguns previously purchased by Ampong Coker.

Law enforcement authorities found another shipping container bound for Ghana containing other vehicles linked to Ampong Coker. The vessel on which this container was loaded sailed from the Port of Baltimore in May 2021, was intercepted at sea on June 14, 2021, and returned to Baltimore on Aug. 20, 2021, without having been off-loaded in Ghana or any other port en route. On Aug. 25, 2021, this container was searched and agents found six 9mm handguns and 16 9mm pistol magazines found in the vehicles that could be linked to Ampong Coker.

Ampong Coker admitted that all of the firearms and magazines were identified on the U.S. Department of Commerce Control List and he had not obtained the required license or written approval to export the weapons to Ghana.

Ampong Coker faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for illegally exporting firearms. U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher has scheduled his sentencing for Sept. 6 at 2 p.m.