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Rising 36-year-old sport administrator, football coach and businessman Shem Alexander was sentenced on Friday 20 February to four years and nine months in a United States federal prison, for conspiracy to smuggle firearms from the United States to Trinidad and Tobago.
The ruling by US District Judge John L Badalamenti appears to draw a line under a “criminal enterprise” that operated between 2019 to 2022 and, according to US investigators, saw more than 200 firearms smuggled into the two-island republic.
Alexander was described by the United States Department of Justice as the “leader of the transnational criminal organisation”.
However, the eventual 57-month sentence points to the fact that Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) felt Alexander was a middle-man or facilitator, and hoped he could point them higher up the crime chain.
Alexander, who has a major in organisation communications and a minor in psychology from the Palm Beach Atlantic University along with a master’s degree, pleaded guilty to conspiracy—but did not offer any fresh names to HSI. Ultimately, the buck stopped with him.
He attended South East Port of Spain Government Secondary and El Dorado Senior Comprehensive (now El Dorado East Secondary).
Alexander’s four co-conspirators, according to HSI, were Trinidad and Tobago nationals Tevin O’Brian Oliver and Jameal Kaia Phillip, American Edward Solomon King III and Florida high school teacher Shannon Lee Samlalsingh.
Oliver and Phillip were sentenced to four years and nine months each in July 2023. King III was also given four years and nine months, to be followed by three years supervised release.
King III’s sentence was influenced by a 5K1 motion by the US government, which is a request for a reduced sentence for defendants who provide “substantial assistance” to the prosecuting team.
Samlalsingh is expected to be sentenced next month.
According to the plea agreement and court records, Alexander and his co-conspirators unlawfully exported firearms, firearms components (including upper/lower receivers and gun parts kits), and related items from Florida to Trinidad and Tobago, between April 2019 and April 2022.
US investigators believe more than 200 firearms were smuggled from the United States into Trinidad and Tobago, during that period. At least two of those guns were traced to crimes on neighbouring Caribbean islands.
On 21 April 2021, members of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service and Customs and Excise Division seized a shipment containing two punching bags at the Piarco International Airport.
The contents of the shipment were labelled as “household items”. However, the punching bags concealed approximately eleven 9mm pistols, two .38 caliber special revolvers, a 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun, three AR-15 barrel foregrips, 19 lower pistol grip assemblies, 11 forearm bolt assemblies, three AR-15-style barrels with forearm grips, 32 AR-15 magazines, one AR-15 drum magazine, 470 rounds of AR-15 ammunition, 34 9mm magazines, three 9mm drum magazines, 284 9mm rounds, fifteen .38 caliber rounds, 36 shells, six magazine couplers, and two shotgun chokes.
At the time, Alexander was director of Gateway Athletics, which sourced United States scholarship opportunities for its young players.
Searches at Alexander’s residence produced nothing while there was no financial evidence that linked the young administrator to the crime. The US DoJ subsequently also failed to convince Trinidad and Tobago’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) of the strength of its case.
Meanwhile, Alexander’s portfolio grew rapidly. He was hired as sports and mentorship coordinator at MIC-IT, an agency of the Ministry of Education, while Gateway Athletics merged with Matura ReUnited—which saw his team now compete in all divisions from under-14 to TTPFL Tier Two.
Photo: MIC Matura ReUnited.
Alexander was a sponsor of TTPFL Tier One club Central FC, then run by Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) president Kieron Edwards.
And, in June 2024, he launched the International Institute of Sports and Management Studies (IISMS) alongside fellow director Gary St Rose, who is a TTFA safeguarding manager.
The IISMS, ostensibly formed “to create opportunity for the future of sports management and coaching”, offered its first honorary degrees to then Soca Warriors head coach Angus Eve and assistant Derek King.
(via TTFA Media.)
Alexander was also Hillview College Under-14 team coach, while he frequently assisted the Arima North Secondary football teams with low-cost transportation.
Arguably his biggest portfolio came from Republic Bank, who entrusted Gateway Athletics with its million-dollar youth football competition, the Republic Bank National Youth Football League, which is endorsed by the TTFA.
Gateway, led by Alexander, ran the competition with critical success between 2022 and 2024.
All the while, HSI and ATF (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) watched and waited from afar.
Having failed to get the DPP to hand Alexander over, US investigators waited for the young man to visit his girlfriend in Jamaica instead—where the Trinidadian is a university student at Mona.
Detained by Jamaican authorities, Alexander accepted extradition to the US to fight the case.
He was never held with a firearm or financial proceeds of gun smuggling. However, an array of text messages between Alexander and co-conspirators along with a trip to a gun show in Florida with King III boosted a case for conspiracy.
And Alexander became the fifth person to plead guilty.
Photo: 12 Media Productions.
The crime carried a maximum of 20 years—eventually he got just under five.
Judge Badalamenti had the option to impose a fine of between US$20,000 and US$250,000. However, he waived the option to impose any financial penalty almost entirely.
He urged Alexander, who has a long history of voluntary charity working dating back to his time as a student in the US, to return to helping rather than harming communities.
Photo: Wired868.
Alexander told the court that, upon release, he will speak to young men and women from Trinidad and Tobago about avoiding his errors of judgment.
The whereabouts of over 200 firearms that were shipped to Trinidad and Tobago between 2019 and 2022 remain largely a mystery. Also unknown are the identities of the local purchasers.
For the duration of this particular gun smuggling enterprise, the only name on the two-island republic that HSI and ATF officials could point to was: Shem Wayne Alexander.
No arrest linked to this matter was ever made by the TTPS.
Case closed—or so it seems.
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