Federal and state investigators are looking into alleged misuse of a highly confidential criminal background database used for gun purchases by a former vice president of Green Top Sporting Goods in Hanover County.
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Todd Stone, Lynch’s lawyer, said Wednesday his client would not comment on the pending case. “I think we will be able to show that Mr. Lynch is not guilty of what he is charged with,” Stone said.
Green Top, which has been in business in Hanover County since 1947 and is one of the state’s largest retail weapons outlets, recently moved under new ownership and management to a sprawling location on Lakeridge Parkway west of Interstate 95.
State police said this week that Lynch was charged following a criminal investigation “into an unauthorized third party being granted access to the
Virginia State Police V-Check program via an employee” of Green Top Sporting Goods.
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The V-Check system is the database through which state police conduct criminal background checks of potential purchasers of firearms, usually at the point of sale, including licensed firearms dealers.
Sources with knowledge of Green Top operations said Lynch allegedly provided privileged information about accessing the V-Check system to a software company that advertises programming that can facilitate storing and submitting documentation that is provided to law enforcement to gain approval for a gun sale.
But the
access code is highly confidential and by law cannot be disseminated to any source outside the licensed dealer to which it is assigned. Calls to the software company were not returned Wednesday.
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The V-Check system is the foundation of the state’s ability to carry out background checks of gun buyers; the system tracks criminal convictions, outstanding protective orders and individuals who have been diagnosed with severe mental disorders.
That sort of information is not passed along to retailers in the process of selling a weapon to a customer; the retailer merely learns if the potential buyer has been approved or disapproved as a buyer.
The system is closely monitored despite the number of checks that are run through the system annually by weapons retailers. In 2012, a record 432,387 gun transactions were recorded. In December that year, more than 5,000 transactions were recorded, the highest monthly total on record.
