Eagleton gets six months for ammo theft
FAIRCHILD AIR FORCE BASE – A former staff sergeant here was sentenced June 22 in U.S. District Court in Spokane to six months in federal prison after previously pleading guilty to being in possession of stolen ammunition.
Eric Eagleton, 30, was offered a plea deal after being arrested and indicted last year, according to reports.
As part of the deal, Eagleton agreed to surrender a “silencer of unknown origin” to the FBI, records show. In exchange, the charges of conspiracy to commit theft of government property and possession of an unregistered firearm were dismissed.
In March 2022, Eagleton, Staff Sgt. John Sanger and another man went to a shooting range near Fishtrap Lake, records show. Unknown to Eagleton and Sanger, they were in the company of an undercover agent from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.
According to an affidavit filed April 25 2022, Staff Sgt. Nathan Richards, who lives in Airway Heights, also came to the shooting range, and so had Senior Airman Jaron Chaffey and his wife, Madison Chaffey
The undercover agent reported they had been firing stolen green tip 5.56 M855 ammunition, records show.
Eagleton was found to have 1,600 rounds of U.S. Air Force Ammunition at his residence when agents searched his Spokane residence records show. They found the ammunition in a case marked (US-DOD) and that it had been stolen from the Combat Arms Training and Maintenance Center at Fairchild.
The initial indictment also accused four other members of falsifying documents and allowing the theft, records show.
The original affidavit showed Richards also knew about the falsification of records to qualify Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD), which is how they tried covering up the theft according to records.
The scheme was initially uncovered after authorities began investigating Sanger for anti-government posts on social media, records show.
Matthew graduated from West Virginia University-Parkersburg in 2011 with a journalism degree. He's an award-winning photographer and enjoys writing stories about people.
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