NEARLY four years after he was charged with multiple serious firearms offences, former Wagga man Michael James Boxsell has been jailed for almost three more years.
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Boxsell, 51, was given a head sentence just shy of five years and five months after being convicted of unlawfully selling firearms three times or more within 12 months.
Six charges of possessing an unauthorised firearm and 11 charges of selling an unregistered firearm were withdrawn by the prosecution.
Judge Jennifer English, sentencing Boxsell in Campbelltown District Court this week, backdated his sentence to July 8 last year and set a non-parole period of four years and 18 days, making Boxsell eligible for release on July 25, 2019.
Boxsell was grabbed up on September 25, 2012, by Wagga police and detectives in the Firearms and Organised Crime Squad working as Strike Force Eddystone.
He was one of two men arrested and accused of illegally selling firearms in the state’s south west.
While on bail and waiting for his court case to be finalised, Boxsell was bashed.
His solicitor, David Barron, told Wagga District Court last year that Boxsell had almost lost a leg and had lost 20 per cent of vision in one eye.
The case against Boxsell involved intercepts of some 1500 telephone conversations and text messages.
In other court news, a Wagga man who made vile sexual suggestions and sent pornography to someone he thought was a 13 year old girl will be sentenced in the District Court after pleading guilty to using a carriage service to groom a person under 16 for sex.
According to facts tendered to Wagga Local Court this week, 27-year-old Liam David Weaver went into an internet chatroom in February this year and began communicating with a person he thought was a teenager.
But, in fact, the “teenager” was an officer in the NSW Police child exploitation unit.
At one point, Weaver said: “I should pick you up from school one day and we should have some fun.”
Weaver, of Glenfield Park, was arrested at his Forest Hill workplace on May 13 by police working with Strike Force Trawler.
He was one of three Riverina men arrested in two days and accused of inappropriate behaviour over the internet.
Police say regular covert online investigations are conducted by the child exploitation unit.
Meanwhile, the manager of a Wagga clothing store had been ordered to perform 220 hours of community service after she pleaded guilty to larceny as a servant.
Police facts tendered to Wagga Local Court said Melanie Clare Richards stole $3388 from Crossroads’ Wagga store between May 22 last year and April 27 this year.
Richards, 35, was ordered to pay back the stolen money to her former employer.