I took my 375 and my Merkel 500 NE to the local Customs office this morning to get a form 4457 signed. The customs agent ran a search on my 375 which came back fine, but when he ran one on my Merkel it came back as a stolen rifle. I bought the rifle new in the box in March of last year from a dealer. Customs then said they could not release my rifle and would hold it pending an investigation.

I recently moved, so most of my files are still in boxes. I am trying to find my receipt and am going to contact the dealer on Tuesday. I also intend to go to the FFL who received the rifle here in AZ and get a copy of the transfer paperwork if I can't find it.

I am planning on hunting with the rifle in eight weeks, but if this process moves at the "speed of government," I doubt I will get to take it to Africa. Does anyone have any suggestions or advice?

I should also add that the Customs Agent was a nice guy and seemed genuinely sorry that I was in this situation. He has called me a couple of times today to give me updates and get more information.

The very best of luck to you in a lousey situation.

Lhook
These searches "hit" on the serial number.
Are you sure that the "search" turned up not just a "hit" on a stolen gun of another type with the same serial number, but did the "hit" indicate that it was for a Merkel in 500 Nitro Express. Did you find out what Police Dept took the report and who/where the rifle was stolen from?

If not I would go back down there and get that info.

Not sure this is right but this is how I understand it:.....you do not have to prove it's your gun.....you're in posession of it and anyone that thinks it belongs to them must carry the burden of proof!

Dad gum! I hope they work this out quickly for you. Hunting with your weapon of choice is as important as getting to go hunting. Good luck.

I would get a good attorney involved ASAP!

450,

No, he showed me the description on his computer screen and even called Washington and asked for a verbal description. It was the same type of rifle. I am hoping that someone reported a stolen Merkel and gave the wrong serial number.

Good Luck, lets hope it is another rifle stolen.

So when did customs start checking serial numbers? In the past they have just signed the damn slip for me.

Considering you really don't have to have the damn in the first place, it sounds like a scam to me. Or a complete f*ckup for which they will, of course, have no responsibility.

Get an attorney fast and sue their ass.

Damn!

Might be worth a shot to get in touch with Merkel. They certainly have records of the dealer they shipped the rifle to in the first place. If you can show that Merkel shipped to your dealer (or an importer who transferred it to your dealer), and get your dealer to provide paperwork that they sold that rifle to you, it seems pretty clear at that point that you have established a chain of legal possession-from the manufacturer right to you.

There is only one Merkel with that particular serial number in that model.

Police reports are public record, so press the jurisdiction where the report was filed and get a copy. Stranger things have happened, but it is possible that the serial number on the original report was transposed when input into the system. It should (should) also indicate how ownership was proven (receipt, ATF files, etc). It is also possible here that a serial number from a receipt was not copied correctly onto a police report.

I hope you never need these records and that everything gets ironed out. But if it does not, you will unfortunately need them for your own peace of mind.

It has happened where a firearm is sold "off the books" by someone working in a gun shop. The customer fills out the paperwork and gets a receipt, but the forms are never filed and are trashed by the employee. If you purchased by check or credit card, start the ball rolling on getting those records in order. A payment would still be made to the gun store, but the receipts would balance - offset by the illegal cash withdrawal by the thief from the cash register.

Another possibility is that this was some insurance scam by the gun shop, importer or individual who never owned the rifle. Again, you will need your records.

Let us know what happens.

I have never had my numbers run either.

But think about this.....

If you had a double stolen, wouldn't you want ANY Law Enfrocement type to "run the numbers" when ever possible????

I have experienced "hits" on the serial number, but sometimes the "other particulars" did not match.

I think if a Dealer sold you a stolen gun, then he should replace it.

Last time I got 4457's at Tucson International was over 2 years ago and they wre running serial numbers then.

I have never had the numbers run at D/FW customs.
I have taken guns that did not belong to me.
Something smells.

Last year when I had a 4457 done in San Franisco, they barely looked at the guns! But maybe if they start running serial numbers they will find the 11 that were stolen from me in the 60's!??
Good luck on getting this straightened out tho.

Go the route of tracing the 4473 and then go back from there to the distributor, then GSI, then MErkel. It should be a straight shot. I used to run NICS traces all the time for the FBI and things always worked out favorably.

I wonder if Merkel serializes guns serially per 'batch' of say 500 Nitro's, then you would only have to have a single digit mistyped, confused etc to be in your situation. I dont think an attorney would do a damn thing seeing as how the number did reference a 500 Nitro. Last Merkel box I saw was hand typed so mistakes do happen.
_BAxter

I don't think that you need an attorney at this stage of the game. Call GSI, the Merkel distributor here in the U.S. and find out who they sold that gun to first. I'd do that first thing Tues. morning. I would also call the FFL that you bought it from as well and inform him of the situation. A DEALER could not have sold it to you without running an instant background check on you and it. It should have been reported stolen right then and there IF it was stolen. Sounds really fishy to me.

quote:

Originally posted by BaxterB:
I wonder if Merkel serializes guns serially per 'batch' of say .500 Nitro's, then you would only have to have a single digit mistyped, confused etc to be in your situation.

I think Merkel may number DRs separately for each caliber. A friend of mine owns Merkel .500 Nitro number 1. IIRC, the number on it is "500001". If that's how they're numbered, the .500s should be a real short list.
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"Serious rifles have two barrels, everything else just burns gunpowder."

quote:

Originally posted by Will:
So when did customs start checking serial numbers? In the past they have just signed the damn slip for me.


Get an attorney fast and sue their ass.

Will, he said he didn't have the sales slip, from the dealer, or couldn't find it! That may be why they ran a check. You need proof of ownership when you get a 4457 for anything, not just guns! I never throw away a sales, or bill of sale, slip for any rifle I buy.

I'd go to that dealer, and get a copy of the yellow slip you filled out, and an invoice where he got the rifle from the distributer, along with your sales slip, when you find it, or have him fax a copy to the customs office! A call to Merkel, or the American importer, may be a good idea as well! What ever you do do it quickly!

Im hopeing someone didn't steal the damn thing out of a new shipment, and sell it to a shady dealer! When I worked for an international airline, we had a whole shipment of German made handguns go missing from the New York city's JFK airport warehouse, after they cleared customs! So it does happen!

quote:

You need proof of ownership when you get a 4457 for anything, not just guns!

I was never asked for proof of ownership.....and most of us cannot show it anyway as they were inherited or purchased privately etc.

Customs only records that you was in posession of the gun prior to leaving the States so you do not have to pay taxes on it upon return.

Yes you don't need proof. It is really none of their damn business.

This infuriates me. Another example of cooperating with the feds gets you in trouble when they overstep their authority.

There is no law that says you have to have the damn thing when you re-enter the country, even though the customs agents generally try to intimidate you into believing it.

If you fall into this trap, you will have to have a form for everything, including your shorts.

It's all about control.

quote:

Originally posted by vapodog:
Not sure this is right but this is how I understand it:.....you do not have to prove it's your gun.....you're in posession of it and anyone that thinks it belongs to them must carry the burden of proof!

...but if the guy has a police report with a Merkel .500 with that serial number on it, even if he wrote the number down wrong...

I don't know how this is supposed to work for sure either. My experience with this was 26 years ago, and it may be completely different now.

My folks' home was burgled in 1981 and all the guns stolen, including some of mine that were stored there. Among them was a 12 gauge Win Model 12 3" Magnum duck gun that dad had bought new in 1950. We gave the Sheriff an inventory, complete with serial numbers. Several months later, I was strolling through the Astrohall Gun Show, and saw dad's Model 12 on a guy's table. I didn't need to pick it up to check the number, I just kept walking, until I spotted a uniformed HPD officer a couple aisles over. He says "Oh yeah, where at?" He just walked up, picked up the gun, told the guy that it had been reported stolen, and carried it up to the front of the hall. He called in to check NCIC, and that was that. That was on a Saturday. I went down to the PD HQ Monday morning with the Sheriff's report, signed the gun out and took it home.

LHook, I agree that you need to get with GSI and the dealer ASAP. I know how you feel, and I sure hope you get this sorted out.
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"Serious rifles have two barrels, everything else just burns gunpowder."

I guess the question would be why did you wait till 8 weeks before the trip to get the 4457?
Stinky deal though anyway one looks at it....good luck.

All kinds of bad things can happen. I have a friend who found a .308 Model 70 leaning up against a tree in Colorado that had obviously been there for a month. He brought it home, reblued it and put a new scope on it, his son hunted with it for years. His son has since started college and was on his way back to school after deer season, got a traffic ticket, they ran the number on the gun. The a-hole who lost it had reported it stolen and turned in a claim on his homeowners insurance. The gun along with the new leupold was confiscated and given back to the guy who filed a bogus police report and committed insurance fraud.

Thanks for the suggestions everybody. I didn't think about contacting GSI. I'll add that to my list of things to do on Tuesday motning.

quote:

Originally posted by vapodog:

quote:

You need proof of ownership when you get a 4457 for anything, not just guns!

I was never asked for proof of ownership.....and most of us cannot show it anyway as they were inherited or purchased privately etc.

Customs only records that you was in posession of the gun prior to leaving the States so you do not have to pay taxes on it upon return.

Same here, never been questioned about ownership, receipts and etc. As recently as 2 weeks ago they hardly looked at the rifle, just watched us fill it out and signed off in Omaha. We have used Kansas City, Denver, Omaha and a departure city over the years (forget which one) and never a question about proving ownership.

Last year the agent just verified the serial numbers. This year it was a different agent and he said they were not supposed to issue a 4457 without checking to see if it is a stolen gun becasue the 4457 is saying that the gun is legally in your possession. It is not establishing thay you are the owner of the gun, just that you are in legal possession of the gun.

I hope everything works out for you but you could be out of luck. Your new gun well may be stolen and even with a receipt you could be out of luck. If the new gun was stolen from a dealer or en-transit and sold to another dealer illegally you have no right to the gun. You will have to get your money out of the dealer who sold you the gun. You are lucky in a way you were not arrested, possession of stolen property is a crime. Granted they have to prove you knew the gun is stolen but they can still hold you. As far as people crying about the custom officer checking the serial number I say job well done, if my guns are stolen I hope someone in law enforcement runs the numbers. This customs officer did his job and treated the poor hunter with respect and courtesy.

I hate to see someone have a firearm stolen and love it when law enforcement does a good job but the 4457 was initially put in place as ameans of proving on your return that you did not purchase an item abroad thereby avoiding taxes. These people are simply growing the bureaucracy, remember when the communicable disease center in atl headed off into gun control without a mandate from anyone. This situation will work out to your favor let's hope it happens in time for your safari.

quote:

but the 4457 was initially put in place as ameans of proving on your return that you did not purchase an item abroad thereby avoiding taxes. These people are simply growing the bureaucracy, remember when the communicable disease center in atl headed off into gun control without a mandate from anyone.

That is 100% correct. And then a percentage of the folks like some of the above posters just think its great and here we go again with more governemntal BS!!!

quote:

Originally posted by Will:
Yes you don't need proof. It is really none of their damn business.

This infuriates me. Another example of cooperating with the feds gets you in trouble when they overstep their authority.

There is no law that says you have to have the damn thing when you re-enter the country, even though the customs agents generally try to intimidate you into believing it.

If you fall into this trap, you will have to have a form for everything, including your shorts.

It's all about control.

Will I didn't make myself clear, evidently! I didn't say it is required to have proof of ownership, but you DO need it! The sales slip would have bypassed the computer check, that caused Lhook7's problem. It is one thing to kiss the customs ass, and quite another to stick you head in the sand. I have taken the sales slips into the customs office, without the rifles, and got my 4457 on the presentation of the PROOF OF OWNERSHIP, leaving the rifles in my suv, and was never asked to produce them for inspection! Being a hard head will get you nothing but a headache!

We could conduct another (and very long) thread on gov"t employees creating law in their own agencies.....sheriff's office peolle demanding SSNs for issuing firearms purchase permits!.....I just ask for the county attorney and then demand they respect the 1974 privacy act!.....That usually gets things cleared up for me and everyone that follows thereafter!

But to this specific incident, we have a choise to cover ourselves with papers or fight the BS.....my hat is off to the fighters as they make things so much easier for all that follow...cowtowing to these assholes just rewards their ignorance and we don't need more of it!

BTW....customs in Omaha also told me that customs don't really care about the 4457 form as they cannot charge you duty on the gun upon return as they MUST PROVE YOU BOUGHT THE GUN OVERSEAS.....it's not up to you to prove you did not!

This much I can attest to.....when in some African countries one must be able to prove the gun is yours and they readily accept the 4457 as that proof.....don't leave home without it!

quote:

Being a hard head will get you nothing but a headache!

Without hard-heads, we would have been "granted" our independence from England in the late 1960's only to have the communist world supply the Commanche, Apache, and Souix with AK-47's to overthrow the government.

With out hard-heads, the West Coast would be speaking Japanese and the East Coast German.

quote:

Originally posted by ledvm:

quote:

Being a hard head will get you nothing but a headache!

Without hard-heads, we would have been "granted" our independence from England in the late 1960's only to have the communist world supply the Commanche, Apache, and Souix with AK-47's to overthrow the government.

With out hard-heads, the West Coast would be speaking Japanese and the East Coast German.

actually both sides of this battle are right.....the question really is.....what battles do we want to fight!

With out hard-heads, the West Coast would be speaking Japanese and the East Coast German.[/QUOTE]

Instead of the Spanish they now speak.

Lee
Good luck on clearing up this mess. I know how much you were looking forward to hunting with your .500

Michael

Thanks Michael, I appreciate it.

Please email me your phone number when you get a chance, I have lost your number.

Lee

The way tracing works is as follows: any gun imported into the US must have the importer's name and address engraved on the action or bbl. So the ATF knows which file to look in. In the case of Merkel, it would be GSI or lately Merkel USA. The SN is recorded on the ATF6 and confirmed on the ATF6 part 2. So to trace a gun, they start with the importer. The importer is required to maintain a log showing the FFL no. of the dealer it went to. The dealer is required to maintain a log of the person he sold it to. If this was a private person, then there is a gap in the traceability. The ATF can contact the person who bought the gun based on the paperwork the dealer is required to keep forever (even though the govt is not allowed to keep the NICs data). If they find the person, then they can ask him who the gun was sold to and so on. But of course if the person has moved it may not be possible to continue the trace. However, every time a gun is sold by a dealer, they run a stolen gun check on the gun concurrently with the FBI check. There is a database of stolen guns. So if a stolen gun comes back into the mainstream, they can trace it backwards as well.

This case is very strange for two reasons. One, if the gun was NIB and sold by a dealer, it's very unlikely to have been stolen. Possible but unlikely. Second, if it was in the stolen gun database, when you bought the gun it would have come up hot.

So I suspect the customs guy entered the wrong serial no. Or someone had a similar gun stolen after you bought yours, and reported the wrong sn. Or possibly the dealer you bought it from committed an insurance fraud. But not likely, when he has a yellow form in his file showing that he sold the gun to you.

You did undergo a NICS check when you bought the gun, right?

Russ,

It was NIB from a dealer and transferred to my FFL dealer here in AZ. I figure there are two possible scenarios: the one you mention (which I won't until I get more details) or someone did have a Merkel stolen and turned in the wrong serial number. The serial number on the "hit" was the serial number of my rifle.

It sounds like you have your hands full working this out. I dont think a attorney will help at this point, and I am not sure how the Customs office checks for stolen property, but where I work we do as follows: The make, model, caliber, and ser.# is ran through NCIC/ (National Crime Information Center) TCIC (Texas Crime Information Center)database and a result is returned, either clear of stolen. Sometimes we dont get a reply at once, as you can imagine the nationwide database is pretty big, and you can get what we call a "Delayed Hit" which I have seen show up 3-4 weeks later. The "Return" does not show who owns the gun, just if it has been reported stolen.

As most law enforcement employees are human there are several places where the wrong information could have been entered as stolen to begin with. The victim of the theft could have gave the officer the wrong numbers, the officer could have written it down wrong, the person entering the information into the database could have entered it wrong. Any of these would cause a legal weapon to apear to be stolen until proven otherwise.

I would find out where the gun was supposed to be stolen from and request a copy of the police report, then speak to the investigating officer. You may have to file for the report under Freedom of Information Act. Then I would get a copy of the transfer paperwork from the place you bought it, showing you purchased it legally. If it was stolen before you bought it you are out of luck, good luck getting your money back.

BTW jstevens, if you file a claim on insurance for a stolen item and the insurance pays on it then the item is located the item belongs to the insurance company who will sell it, first choice goes to the original owner. The owner might have had it stolen then someone else took it hunting and left it. Finders Keepers only works in playgrounds.
Eterry