Southern Illinois man convicted in federal case involving 3D-printed guns

BENTON — A federal jury this week found a Harrisburg man guilty of five gun-related charges tied to what prosecutors described as a small-scale gun manufacturing operation run from his southern Illinois home that included guns made with a 3D printer.

During a May 2024 search of property in Harrisburg belonging to Yaroslav Vishnevski and his then-wife, federal agents seized two unregistered homemade short-barreled rifles, silencers and two additional modified firearms that he illegally possessed, prosecutors said.

Investigators also recovered what they described as a workshop for making and modifying weapons, including three 3D printers, a Ghost Gunner milling machine, and a drill press with firearm-specific jigs. They also hauled off nearly 80 pounds of aluminum shavings that prosecutors said were a byproduct of machining gun components.

“The evidence shows that he was running a mini gun factory out of his house,” Tom Leggans, an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, told the jury on Tuesday afternoon during closing arguments of the two-day trial in Benton.

The trial offered a rare glimpse into the growing world of home gun-making — and the challenges facing law enforcement as readily available 3D printers and other tools enable the production of increasingly sophisticated privately made firearms that often can’t be traced, earning them the nickname “ghost guns.” The legality of 3D printing firearms varies by federal and state laws. The term “ghost gun” is often used to describe a variety of unserialized firearms.

Not all are 3D-printed, but unserialized 3D-printed firearms are often described using that term. Under federal law, privately made firearms may be legal, even without a serial number, though certain firearms and explosives are subject to registration and other requirements.

Ryan Propst, a special agent with the Illinois State Police Firearms Investigations Unit, testified that customs officials in New York contacted his agency after intercepting a package containing two silencers mailed from China to Vishnevski.

Propst said agents executed a search warrant at Vishnevski’s home after he accepted the package, which was delivered under surveillance.

Vishnevski did not testify at trial. His attorney, Joshua Richards, argued that he was a firearms hobbyist who made and modified the weapons solely for himself. At the time, Vishnevski had a valid Illinois Firearm Owner’s Identification card and concealed-carry license and had no prior criminal record.

“My client liked to tinker with guns, and he liked to make guns with his 3D printer,” Richards told the court, adding that he “tried to follow the law as he understood it.”

The jurors, most of whom identified themselves as gun owners during jury selection, deliberated for about 30 minutes before returning guilty verdicts on all five remaining counts.

He was found guilty of failing to satisfy federal registration and taxation requirements before manufacturing or possessing two short-barreled rifles, a shotgun and silencers subject to those rules, as well as for possessing an imported shotgun with an obliterated serial number. The government had previously dismissed a sixth charge.

Vishnevski vows to appeal

Vishnevski, 33, had been on home confinement at his mother’s residence near Boston while awaiting trial. He was taken into custody following the verdict and is being held at the Franklin County Jail in Benton pending sentencing.

He vowed to fight the jury’s guilty verdicts.

“I am surprised that people do not value their own Second Amendment rights,” Vishnevski texted. “The Constitution is the foundation of this country, and the Second Amendment is an inherent natural right. The Founding Fathers couldn’t have made it more clear: ‘not to be infringed.’ The government has no place to trespass on a founding principle of this nation.”

Vishnevski, communicating with Capitol News Illinois by text message from jail, said he believes he was under government surveillance long before the raid on his home and alleged he was targeted because of his Ukrainian background. After his arrest, Vishnevski said a Homeland Security officer questioned him about his views on Ukraine and any associations he had with people living there.

Vishnevski moved from Ukraine to Greece at age 6 and immigrated to the United States with his parents at age 7. He is now a U.S. citizen.

He graduated magna cum laude from Boston University in 2014 with a degree in biochemistry and molecular biology.

Vishnevski said he then completed Air Force officer training and enrolled at the St. Louis University School of Medicine under orders to serve as an Air Force physician after graduation. He left the program before earning his degree and was later transferred to the Individual Ready Reserve. Vishnevski and his wife moved to Harrisburg in 2020, attracted by the opportunities and freedoms he believed the small town could offer them.

According to a forensic evaluation conducted after his arrest and provided to Capitol News Illinois, Vishnevski told a psychologist that registration requirements and expanding gun regulations were eroding constitutional protections, particularly with respect to privately made firearms. He described himself as a person who wanted to be prepared: He maintained a bunker, emergency food supplies and a stockpile of firearms for what he described as security reasons.

“I am not a crazy person,” he told the psychologist, according to the report, adding that most people, if given the opportunity, would want to be financially secure, self-sufficient and prepared for emergencies. He compared his preparations to the contingency planning undertaken by governments.

3D-printed guns test law enforcement

State and federal authorities across the country have struggled to regulate 3D-printed firearms.

In a 2021 audit, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General criticized the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ efforts to monitor 3D-printed guns. While ATF had identified only a small number of criminal cases involving 3D-printed guns, auditors said the figure likely understated their use because ATF had no way for law enforcement agencies to specifically report whether a recovered firearm had been made using a home 3D printer, and because many lack serial numbers, thus earning them the nickname “ghost guns.”

Jeffrey Bodell, an ATF firearms enforcement officer who specializes in 3D-printed firearms, testified during the trial that he has spent the past year and a half operating a federal testing lab that 3D prints firearms almost daily from publicly available designs to better understand how they work and what federal laws they fall under.

Illinois has some of the nation’s strictest gun laws. In 2022, Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation banning most unmarked homemade firearms, or “ghost guns.” The Illinois law requires privately made firearms to be serialized through a federally licensed dealer. Vishnevski, however, was prosecuted under federal law, not Illinois’ ghost-gun statute. He said he rejects the term “ghost gun” because it attempts to tie gun-making hobbyists to criminal activity.

Federal law does not explicitly prohibit people from making firearms with a 3D printer.

Instead, federal law requires certain weapons regulated under the National Firearms Act to be registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record maintained by the ATF and taxed, regardless of whether they are made or modified at home or purchased from a federally licensed dealer. Those include machine guns, silencers, destructive devices, rifles with barrels under 16 inches, shotguns with barrels under 18 inches and firearms with an overall length under 26 inches.

‘A place that valued freedom’

The property authorities described as a “mini gun factory” sits in a quiet, unassuming neighborhood in Harrisburg, just a few blocks from the town square. For Vishnevski, he said it represented his chance to stake out a piece of the American dream.

Property records show that he and his then-wife each purchased one of two small, nearly identical white homes on East Logan Street in 2019 and 2020, paying $29,000 for both. One was purchased in his name, which was rented as an Airbnb, and the other in her name. A fifth-wheel camper parked between the two houses was also rented out as an Airbnb at times, he said.

Vishnevski said he liked the idea of living in a small town where his money could go farther — and it was close enough to family of his then wife, whom he met online while in medical school.

“Homes were affordable. I could buy them with the money I saved. Taxes were low,” he texted. “It seemed like a place that valued freedom where I could establish independence.”

Aside from attending medical school on an Air Force scholarship, Vishnevski had worked at a variety of jobs: at a pharmaceutical company, for a collections company, as a security guard and in an ophthalmologist’s office, according to the forensic evaluation conducted by DOJ while he was jailed in Chicago. He told the psychologist he was dissatisfied with repetitive work and had been fired or “induced” his firing by not doing it.

At one point, he started his own computer business, refurbishing computers and selling equipment. He also reported earning significant income through cryptocurrency investments, in addition to his Airbnb business in Harrisburg.

Neighbor: ‘He got carried away’

Ron Crutchfield, a retired Harrisburg High School history teacher who lives across the street, said the homes had fallen into disrepair and he was pleased that Vishnevski and his wife bought them and fixed them up. Crutchfield said he didn’t meet Vishnevski until a few years after he moved to town, but the two have since grown close.

Crutchfield attended the trial and later told a reporter that he does not believe Vishnevski intended to do anything wrong.

“He fell into a hobby and the hobby happened to be weapons, and I think he got carried away. He kept trying to perfect his weapons,” Crutchfield said. “He probably should have been an engineer as opposed to trying to be a doctor.”

“It was unfortunate,” he added. “It got out of control.”

Despite the years between them, Crutchfield said they developed a close friendship over time. Sometimes, he said, Vishnevski would make him 3D-printed trinkets such as dragon figurines because he knew Crutchfield liked dragons.

Crutchfield said authorities questioned him about whether he had purchased any guns from Vishnevski. He said he had not, but he came to believe authorities suspected Vishnevski was trafficking firearms or were suspicious that he was involved in activity much broader than what he was ultimately charged with and found guilty of.

Vishnevski believed he’d been watched for years

Vishnevski also believed the government had been interested in him long before the May 2024 raid on his home. He shared with CNI dozens of pages of notes, screenshots, photographs, recordings and other documents that he said support his claims of innocence and show a pattern of scrutiny predating the investigation.

Among the events he pointed to is the purchase of a Ghost Gunner 3 machine for about $3,000 in August 2023. The desktop milling machine is marketed for manufacturing firearm components. Not long afterward, Vishnevski said, Banterra Bank notified him that it was closing his account. An audio recording he provided appears to show a bank representative describing his account activity as “risky” but declining to elaborate when he asked her how that determination was made.

Vishnevski viewed the closure as evidence of outside scrutiny or government involvement months before he ordered the metal tubes from China that he described as fuel filters and federal prosecutors said were intended to function as firearm silencers.

The provided records also alleged an employee at a different bank questioned his wife about their marriage and finances, accused him of possible money laundering related to cryptocurrency proceeds he had transferred to her, and restricted access to funds in her account.

Based on phone calls reviewed as part of his forensic evaluation, the report noted Vishnevski believed some residents of Harrisburg viewed him suspiciously because he was born in Ukraine. According to the evaluation, he reported that he’d heard people in the community had referred to him as a “Ukrainian terrorist” and that authorities may have viewed him as either a terrorist or a gun dealer.

The investigation and prosecution, he said, carried significant personal and financial consequences. After the raid, he could no longer rent out properties he owned through Airbnb; his homes, he said, fell into disrepair while he was jailed. His wife filed for divorce, and he said she later experienced homelessness. Among the materials he shared were videos of her in distress filmed inside one of their homes.

Many of the documents reflect Vishnevski’s belief that authorities and others were monitoring him. He created videos of packages delivered to his home with small tears that he believed showed postal workers had opened them. He identified people he suspected were cooperating with investigators and filed official complaints against numerous individuals, including a federal ATF agent, a nurse practitioner, the Harrisburg postmaster and his first attorney. He has prepared outreach to civil rights attorneys for a potential legal claim against the government, claiming he can show their actions have resulted in close to $1 million in economic damages to him.

Following the raid, two orders of protection were filed against him. The first, filed in September 2024 by that nurse practitioner at Eldorado Primary Care, was granted on an emergency basis but later dismissed. A second petition, filed in December 2024 by an individual employed by both the Egyptian Health Department and Point Blank Range in Harrisburg, an indoor shooting range, was granted and remains in effect after an unsuccessful appeal by Vishnevski.

After the second order of protection was sought, Vishnevski’s bond was revoked and he spent eight months in jail awaiting trial. He remained jailed until August 2025, when he was released to live with his mother, Ruzhena Vishnevski, in Massachusetts. While awaiting trial, he was permitted to work and took a job at the Audi dealership where she also works. She traveled to southern Illinois this week to attend the trial.

After the verdict, his mother texted a reporter that she believed the case was a setup and described the prosecution as an effort to “make him a criminal.”

“He was good for community,” she wrote. “Now he’s in jail, houses all damaged, without people. They made bonuses to catch such a terrorist.”

Sentencing has been set for Sept. 24 at the federal courthouse in Benton.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.