FLORIDA, United States (CMC) –  A 47-year-old teacher has been sentenced to one year and one day imprisonment in the United States for conspiracy to make false statements to a firearm dealer.

US District Judge William Jung imposed the sentence on Shannon Nicole Samlalsingh and also ordered that she forfeit the firearms purchased as a result of the offence. Samlalsingh pleaded guilty on June 20, 2025.

According to court documents, Samlalsingh, then a Hillsborough County high school teacher, bought seven firearms for a Trinidad-based transnational criminal organisation.

She falsely stated on Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives forms that those firearms were for her but gave the firearms to members of the unnamed transnational criminal organisation,  who then smuggled the firearms into Trinidad.

On April 21, 2022, Trinidad and Tobago authorities seized a shipment from the United States containing two punching bags and other goods at Piarco International Airport.

Concealed within the two punching bags were approximately eleven 9mm pistols, two .38 caliber special revolvers, a 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun, three AR-15 barrel foregrips, 19 lower pistol grip assemblies, 11 forearm bolt assemblies, three AR-15-style barrels with forearm grips, 32 AR-15 magazines, one AR-15 drum magazine, 470 rounds of AR-15 ammunition, 34 9mm magazines, three 9mm drum magazines, 284 9mm rounds, fifteen .38 caliber rounds, 36 shells, six magazine couplers, and two shotgun chokes.

Samlalsingh had purchased four of the seized firearms: a SAR-9 9mm pistol, a Ruger-9 9mm pistol, a Taurus G3 9mm pistol, and a Taurus G2C 9mm pistol.

The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations, including HSI’s Attaché, Caribbean, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, with assistance provided by the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and other US law enforcement agencies.