A gun dealer has told a court he left handguns inside plastic bags in an alleyway multiple times to be collected by unknown persons because his life had been threatened.
Shane Simpson, 48, has admitted to illegally supplying 279 weapons through his Port Kembla firearm shop over a six-year period.
During a sentencing hearing in the Wollongong District Court, Simpson said he was led to a double life of offending after being shown a video in 2013 of a man being killed with a gun linked to his shop.
"I got scared. I got involved because I panicked — it happened just weeks before my wife was due to give birth to our third child," Simpson told the court.
He said his and his family's lives were often threatened by unknown figures over the phone. He said he was told in one such call: "You know what we are capable of."
Simpson, who had no prior criminal record, gave detailed evidence about how he on-sold hundreds of weapons illegally from 2013 until his arrest in April 2019.
He told the court he regularly received phone calls requesting more handguns.
He described how he would place between one and four handguns inside a black plastic bag and stash it under a broken window of an abandoned shop in Port Kembla to be collected.
This exchange occurred every few weeks and always at 2:00pm, the court heard.
Simpson said he would later return to find bags filled with up to $6,000 cash.
He told the court he never learned the identity of those who ended up in possession of the weapons.
Police say Simpson began using his licenced dealership to on-sell Desert Eagle and Glock handguns to criminals by falsely attributing the sales to unwitting interstate arms dealers in 2012.
He used angle grinders to remove serial numbers before fraudulently updating the NSW Firearms Registry.
Ten of the weapons have been linked to serious criminal activity, including the alleged Doonside murder of Craig Anderson and a drive-by shooting in Greystanes.
During cross-examination, Simpson was regularly asked why he did not go to the police.
He replied that he thought about it constantly but did not trust the police.
'Significant organised crime arrest'
Simpson's arrest was described at the time by police as "one of the most significant arrests in organised crime".
NSW State Crime Acting Commander Stuart Smith described the work of specialist detectives as "rigorous".
"We worked closely with the firearms registry and ballistics unit to get a positive match of a number of firearms," he said following Simpson's arrest.
"The anomaly that we found was only able to be discovered from rigorous auditing and cross-referencing in both this and other states by detectives."
Simpson initially faced hundreds of charges but most were withdrawn in court.
He pleaded guilty to seven charges, including six counts of the ongoing supply of firearms.
His sentence will be handed down next month.
