Internal documents show Fleet Farm ignored employee warning about gun sales to straw buyer

Fleet Farm ignored warning about sales, then used those sales as examples of what should have raised red flags; company said sales made it “obvious what was going on here”

Fleet Farm documents uncovered during AG Ellison’s lawsuit against them for negligently permitting straw purchases now public as part of AG Ellison’s settlement with Fleet Farm

Documents hosted at University of California, San Francisco’s Industry Documents Library; Fleet Farm documents serve as the start of new firearm litigation section of the Library, joining Tobacco, Opioids, and other industry litigation documents 

August 19, 2026 (SAINT PAUL) — Today, the Office of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and the University of California, San Francisco’s (UCSF) Industry Documents Library made public 694 internal documents from Minnesota firearms retailer Fleet Farm that show Fleet Farm ignored a clear internal warning when selling firearms to a straw buyer. After Fleet Farm ignored those warnings, Fleet Farm then used its own sales of guns to that straw buyer as an example of what should raise red flags in internal trainings, saying it is “pretty obvious what’s going on” when someone buys numerous, very similar handguns in a short window of time, that is a red flag of straw purchasing. The documents will be the first from the firearms industry to be included in UCSF's Industry Documents Library, which currently houses millions of documents from the tobacco, opioids, and other public health litigation. UCSF’s Industry Documents Library is one of the most comprehensive and significant collection of consumer protection-related documents in the nation.

The internal documents from Fleet Farm were obtained during Attorney General Ellison’s 2022 lawsuit against Fleet Farm for negligently selling firearms to straw purchasers and contributing to gun trafficking in Minnesota by allowing guns to get into the wrong hands. Fleet Farm sold at least 37 firearms to two straw purchasers over the course of 16 months, often selling multiple, extremely similar guns either in single transactions or over short periods of time. One of the guns Fleet Farm sold to straw purchaser Jerome Horton was fired in a large-scale shootout at the Truck Park bar in Saint Paul on October 10, 2021, that ended in the death of 27-year-old Marquisha Wiley and injuries to 14 other bystanders.

The documents are being released as part of Attorney General Ellison’s settlement with Fleet Farm, reached on February 24, 2026, which in addition to requiring Fleet Farm to make significant policy changes to help detect and prevent the sale of guns to straw buyers and pay $1 million, also requires the company to publicly disclose these internal documents. 

“The documents we are releasing today show that Fleet Farm was negligent when it sold guns to straw buyers,” said Attorney General Ellison. “One of Fleet Farm’s own employees warned they may be selling guns to a straw buyer. Fleet Farm ignored this warning, then later used their own sales to straw buyers as examples of what should have raised a red flag. To those who were skeptical of this lawsuit when I filed it, and skeptical that we could use civil law to hold corporations accountable for their roles in public-safety crises, I trust these documents will put that skepticism to rest. My team and I are creating a whole new body of work in successfully using civil law to improve public safety and protect the well-being of Minnesotans everywhere, and we’re going to keep building on it.”

"This case demonstrates that litigation is a powerful tool to bring transparency and accountability to the firearms industry at a time when the federal government has pulled back on oversight. Internal documents that would have stayed buried are now public, and a company that ignored its own employee's warning about straw purchasing has been forced to change the way it sells firearms," said Professor Megan Walsh, director of the University of Minnesota Law School's Gun Violence Prevention Clinic. "Releasing these documents is another example of how Attorney General Ellison is using his position as the People's lawyer to make Minnesota communities safer."

The University of Minnesota Law School’s Gun Violence Prevention Clinic, led by Professor Megan Walsh, served as co-counsel in this litigation under the clinic’s first-of-its-kind partnership with the Attorney General’s Office. The clinic’s law students provided important legal support in the case, including by handling discovery disputes, assisting with depositions of Fleet Farm’s witnesses, and attending multiple hearings and settlement conferences.

The documents

Internal warning

The documents released today include a warning from a Fleet Farm employee, Cory Klebs, of Jerome Horton’s suspicious purchasing activity that the company ignored. 

On July 31, 2021, Horton purchased three handguns at a Fleet Farm in Blaine. This concerned Klebs, as Horton had purchased multiple similar handguns from Fleet Farm days earlier. Klebs emailed one of Fleet Farm’s two firearms compliance employees, Michelle Granato. Klebs noted in his email that Horton bought six pistols from Fleet Farm between July 23, 2021 and July 31, 2021, and attached two Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) “Multiple Sale” forms (Form 3310.4s) to the email. The ATF requires stores fill out Multiple Sale forms to report the sale of multiple firearms in a single transaction, or within the span of several days, as purchasing multiple similar guns in a short time is a warning sign of straw buying.

In Klebs’ email to Granato, he asked if Fleet Farm should stop selling firearms to Horton. Granato never responded to Klebs’ warning, nor did anyone else at Fleet Farm. The company went on to sell eleven more firearms to Horton until the ATF warned Fleet Farm that Horton was a straw buyer in October 2021. Klebs remained so concerned about the incident that he left detailed notes about the incident and his concerns in Fleet Farm’s records before Klebs left his employment at Fleet Farm the following February.

Internal trainings

After ignoring Klebs’ warning, Fleet Farm went on to use Horton’s purchasing as an obvious example of suspicious straw purchasing activity that employees should watch out for.  

In November 2021, the month following the fatal Saint Paul bar shooting, Fleet Farm’s two compliance employees, Michelle Granato and Mike Radl, trained employees on “suspicious sales activity” using the exact two ATF Multiple Sale forms that Klebs reported to Granato in July and that Fleet Farm ignored (pages 6 and 12). During their presentation, Granato and Radl displayed parts of those forms showing Fleet Farm’s sales of multiple handguns to Horton on July 23, July 27, and July 31, 2021, on a PowerPoint slide (slide 6) with the title “Suspicious Sales Activity”. The training slide asks employees: “Does anyone else find this suspicious?”.

While presenting the training, at 15:58 in the video, Granato instructed Fleet Farm employees that these very sales should have raised a flag and that it was “pretty obvious what was going on here.” Similarly, starting at roughly 18:15 into the video, Mike Radl said Fleet Farm employees seeing Horton’s Form 3310.4s during the third sale within days  should know “something is up,” the employees’ “radar should be up,” and employees should “reach out to us in a situation like this” so we can “give you the green light or put a stop to it.”

These training materials and presentations demonstrate that Fleet Farm was negligent in selling guns to straw buyers, as the company itself acknowledged those sales should have prompted action. The ATF has described gun retailers as “the first line of defense against straw purchasing.” Fleet Farm failed in that responsibility.

The impact of Fleet Farm’s sales

Many of the guns that Fleet Farm sold to Horton and another straw buyer, Sarah Elwood, have been used in crimes. On October 10, 2021, the Mossberg MC2C 9mm semiautomatic handgun that Fleet Farm’s Blaine store sold to Horton on July 31, 2021, was fired in the Truck Park shooting in St. Paul by someone with a prior felony conviction for aggravated first-degree robbery, making him ineligible to possess firearms.  During that shootout, 14 people were injured and Marquisha Wiley was killed.

The warning signs were there on July 23, 27, and 31. A Fleet Farm employee alerted the company to Horton’s suspicious purchasing activity. Yet Fleet Farm still sold Horton the firearms. The Truck Park shooting might not have happened if Fleet Farm had not sold guns to Horton on July 31.

The Truck Park shooting was far from the only time a firearm sold by Fleet Farm was recovered by law enforcement.

In total, 18 of the 37 guns Fleet Farm sold to Horton and Elwood have been recovered by law enforcement. That means that 19 of these trafficked guns remain in dangerous hands and threaten Minnesota.

The document library

Attorney General Ellison’s Office released the documents in partnership with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Industry Documents Library. UCSF Industry Documents Library was established in 2002 to collect, preserve, and make freely accessible internal documents created by industries and their partners which have an impact on public health, for the benefit and use of policymakers, researchers, journalists, and the general public.

The Library hosts documents involving the tobacco, opioid, chemical, drug, fossil fuel, and food industries. Today, with the addition of the Fleet Farm documents, the Library is launching a new section called the Firearms Industry Documents Archive (“FAIDA”), which focuses on documents from the firearm industry. The FAIDA is made possible through a grant and support from the Firearms Accountability Initiative, a collaborative, nonpartisan effort to hold bad actors in the firearms industry accountable for its role in American gun violence.

"We are pleased to support preservation and public access to the Fleet Farm documents through our new Firearms Industry Documents Archive,” said Kate Tasker, Director of the UCSF Industry Documents Library. “We also recognize Minnesota’s long legacy of supporting document disclosure for the public benefit, from its groundbreaking 1998 tobacco settlement to the present day. As with the tobacco industry collections, the Firearms Industry Documents Archive will shine a light on corporate practices that cause harm, and help to inform solutions to protect public health and safety.”

More than 1,200 publications have been written based on industry documents housed at UCSF’s Industry Documents Library, which have paved the way for major tobacco control legislation, including a U.S. law that gives the FDA the power to regulate tobacco and a global health treaty under the World Health Organization that prevents the industry from influencing tobacco control laws in many countries around the world.

"They say sunlight is the best disinfectant, and I hope we are able to shine some sunlight on the firearm industry with this release of documents. Minnesotans need to know exactly what Fleet Farm did so that they and companies like them can never do it again,” Attorney General Ellison added. “Legendary Minnesota Attorney General Skip Humphrey took that same approach of transparency with his landmark settlement with Big Tobacco that changed the way Americans see Big Tobacco companies, and I’ve done so as well with my lawsuits against vaping companies, opioid-peddlers, and now Fleet Farm. I’m extremely grateful to the University of California, San Francisco’s Industry Documents Library for their partnership, and I hope lawmakers, journalists, and researchers will use these documents to improve the public health and safety of the American people.”