SYRACUSE, NEW YORK – Charles J. Tan, 23, of Pittsford, New York, was sentenced today to serve 20 years in prison in connection with the unlawful purchase of a shotgun that was used to murder his father in 2015, announced United States Attorney Grant C. Jaquith, Ashan M. Benedict, Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)-New York Field Division, and Monroe County Sheriff Todd Baxter. Tan was also sentenced to serve a three-year term of supervised release following his release from incarceration.
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On June 22, 2018, Charles Tan pled guilty to three federal felonies: receiving a firearm with intent to use it to commit a felony, causing another to make a false written statement to a federal firearms dealer and causing another to make a false record required by law to be kept by a federal firearms dealer. In doing so, Tan admitted that in February 2015 he caused a fellow Cornell University student to make an unlawful “straw purchase” of a 12-gauge shotgun for him from Walmart in Cortland, New York. Tan acknowledged that he falsely told the fellow student that he needed the firearm for hunting, when his actual intent was that it be used to shoot his father. In February 2015 the defendant’s father, Liang “Jim” Tan, was shot to death in his home in Pittsford, New York. Monroe County Sheriff’s Deputies found him seated at his desk in his study, shot multiple times at close range by a 12-gauge shotgun. The state murder trial of Charles Tan in Monroe County (New York) Court ended on October 8, 2015 in a hung jury and the case was later dismissed by the presiding state court judge in November 2015. The federal investigation found evidence that just prior to the murder of his father, Charles Tan emptied a bank account and told friends he would be leaving Cornell University.
United States Attorney Jaquith said, “Justice has finally been done in this case. Charles Tan went to great lengths to obtain a shotgun in Cortland with lies about the actual purchaser and intended use and planned to leave college and flee the country. He drove three hours to Rochester, visited friends for four hours, and then went home, where he found his father working at his home computer in his slippers and gunned him down, savagely shooting him three times in the chest and face. The sentence to imprisonment for 20 years reflects the finding by the court that Tan obtained the shotgun to commit this premeditated murder. Justice was secured through great work by Supervisory Assistant U.S. Attorney Lisa Fletcher, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department.”
photo courtesy of syracuse.com
