A high school teacher from the state Flori­da has plead­ed guilty to her role in a transna­tion­al firearms smug­gling op­er­a­tion linked to a crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion based in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Shan­non Lee Sam­lals­ingh, 46, of Tam­pa, ap­peared be­fore a U.S. court on June 20 and ad­mit­ted to mak­ing false state­ments to a fed­er­al­ly li­censed firearms deal­er.

 Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ), Sam­lals­ingh now faces up to five years in fed­er­al prison.

Be­tween 2020 and 2021, Sam­lals­ingh al­leged­ly pur­chased a range of firearms and firearm com­po­nents from deal­ers in Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty and Mi­a­mi-Dade Coun­ty. 

Fed­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tors say she filed mul­ti­ple ATF Form 4473s, claim­ing she was the buy­er of the weapons, while she was in fact act­ing on in­struc­tions from mem­bers of a Trinida­di­an crim­i­nal en­ter­prise.

Au­thor­i­ties say Sam­lals­ingh re­ceived mon­ey from in­di­vid­u­als af­fil­i­at­ed with the or­ga­ni­za­tion and was di­rect­ed on ex­act­ly what to pur­chase. She lat­er arranged for the weapons and com­po­nents to be con­cealed in car­go items—specif­i­cal­ly, a wire­less speak­er and punch­ing bags—be­fore ship­ping them to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

On April 21, 2021, au­thor­i­ties at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in­ter­cept­ed a ship­ment ar­riv­ing from the U.S. 

Two punch­ing bags were found to con­tain a sub­stan­tial cache of firearms and ac­ces­sories,.The seizure al­so in­clud­ed hun­dreds of rounds of am­mu­ni­tion for var­i­ous firearms, high­light­ing the scale of the op­er­a­tion.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was con­duct­ed by U.S. Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment’s Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty In­ves­ti­ga­tions (HSI) and the Bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co, Firearms and Ex­plo­sives (ATF), with as­sis­tance from Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

Sam­lals­ingh’s sen­tenc­ing date has not yet been set.

MI­A­MI, Jun. 26, CMC

CMC/tt/kb/2025