A Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al has been sen­tenced in a Flori­da court for smug­gling firearms and am­mu­ni­tion in­to this coun­try, fol­low­ing a 2023 seizure at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

A re­lease from the US Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain said on June 26, 2025, 44-year-old Videsh Chan­doo, a dual cit­i­zen of T&T and the Unit­ed States, was sen­tenced to 18 months in prison by US Dis­trict Court Judge William P Dim­itrouleas in the South­ern Dis­trict of Flori­da. He will al­so serve three years of su­per­vised re­lease.

Chan­doo plead­ed guilty on April 4 to charges of smug­gling sev­en pis­tols and 332 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion from the US in­to T&T.

The il­le­gal ship­ment was in­ter­cept­ed by of­fi­cers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (TTCED) on Ju­ly 14, 2023, dur­ing a rou­tine in­spec­tion at Shed 10 in Port-of-Spain.

Fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery, the TTCED and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) worked along­side an em­bed­ded US Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion (CBP) Ad­vi­sor to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In­for­ma­tion was sub­se­quent­ly shared with sev­er­al US fed­er­al agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co, Firearms and Ex­plo­sives (ATF), Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty In­ves­ti­ga­tions (HSI), the US De­part­ment of Com­merce’s Bu­reau of In­dus­try and Se­cu­ri­ty, and the Cari­com IM­PACS Crime Gun In­tel­li­gence Unit.

This joint ef­fort led to Chan­doo be­ing iden­ti­fied as the traf­fick­er.

The state­ment said that in Jan­u­ary this year, rather than un­der­go­ing for­mal ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings, Chan­doo agreed to trav­el to the Unit­ed States with the sup­port of the US Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain, the US CBP, the Diplo­mat­ic Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vice, and the T&T Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs.

The case was pros­e­cut­ed by As­sis­tant US At­tor­ney David Snider.

In the state­ment yes­ter­day, US Em­bassy Chargé d’Af­faires Dr Jenifer Nei­d­hart de Or­tiz praised the out­come as a tes­ta­ment to the strong law en­force­ment part­ner­ship be­tween the Unit­ed States and T&T.

“This case is a great ex­am­ple of the suc­cess­es which are achieved be­cause of the strong bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship ... To­geth­er we will ar­rest and con­vict bad ac­tors and dis­rupt il­le­gal arms traf­fick­ing, pro­tect our bor­ders and make our coun­tries safer,” she said.

Act­ing ATF Di­rec­tor Daniel Driscoll added that the agency’s ex­per­tise was in­stru­men­tal in se­cur­ing Chan­doo’s ap­pre­hen­sion.

“This case is on­ly one ex­am­ple of ATF’s suc­cess­es with both our do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners ... This ef­fort re­in­forces our com­mit­ment to pro­tect all com­mu­ni­ties from vi­o­lent crime.”