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The wife of a notorious mobster with a colourful history of engaging in foreign military adventures was convicted yesterday of 30 counts of gun trafficking.
Ingeborg Anna Richter, 62, was locked up yesterday as Justice Andromahi Karakatsanis concluded she and her husband, Charles "Chuck" Yanover, were involved in selling large quantities of World War I and II firearms, some of them to an undercover cop who posed as a biker.
"We make a buck, you make a buck, who cares what happens afterwards ... You want them and that's it," Karakatsanis said, quoting Richter speaking to Andrew Johnson.
Karakatsanis revoked Richter's bail, saying although she has been free without incident for three years, her "detention is required to maintain confidence in the administration of justice" since she's now guilty and facing jail.
Johnson met the couple at a gun show in May 2002 and purchased a deactivated Sten machine-gun and parts. Johnson told Richter and Yanover that he would distribute them to a criminal organization, the native syndicate in Western Canada.
Yanover, 61, a former enforcer for murdered mob boss Paul Volpe, is behind bars for his leading role in the gun trafficking operation.
Yanover has also spent time in prison for a plot to overthrow the government of Dominica and install a white supremacist regime, and a scheme to assassinate the president of South Korea in the 1980s.
Richter and Yanover both testified that Johnson and a collector named Miroslaw Wasicki -- who bought 23 handguns, rifles and automatic machine-guns plus ammunition -- were buying the cache from Yanover, not Richter. Richter also testified she believed all the firearms were "dewats" (deactivated war trophies) and she didn't know that her husband was prohibited from possessing any firearms until a few weeks before their arrests in 2003.
But the judge rejected Richter's claims.
"They were selling an abundant amount of firearms into the wrong hands," Det.-Sgt. Myron Demkiw said.