A Conspiracy Count With Nobody on the Other End of It: the CBSA Charges Frank Charette, 60, of Cottam With Manufacturing Prohibited Firearms and Publishes the Seventy-One-Day Gap Between the Warrants and the Announcement (September 24, 2026)

The Canada Border Services Agency says fifty-three firearms, two unregistered sub-machine guns and an auto-sear came out of search warrants in Essex County on July 15. It took until this morning to say so. Frank Charette, 60, of Cottam, Ontario faces ten counts, one of which is conspiring with somebody the agency does not name to manufacture a prohibited firearm — and the file that led investigators to him was a different Essex County gun case the CBSA announced almost exactly a year ago.

The charge that implies a second person

Nine of the ten counts describe things one man can do on his own: import without a permit, smuggle controlled goods, manufacture a prohibited firearm, possess prohibited firearms and a prohibited device knowing the possession is unauthorized, and store non-restricted, restricted and prohibited firearms contrary to the regulations. The tenth is conspiracy to manufacture a firearm under section 465(1)(c) of the Criminal Code.

Conspiracy is an agreement, and an agreement needs at least two parties to it. The release names one accused. It does not say whether a co-conspirator has been charged, whether one is being sought, whether the agreement is alleged to have been with a person in Canada or in the United States, or whether the other party is the Windsor resident charged out of the agency’s earlier investigation. On the published record the second half of the conspiracy is simply absent.

Parts in, guns out

The agency’s account of the mechanism is unusually specific for a file this thin on names. Investigators with the Ontario Firearms Smuggling Enforcement Team allege Charette arranged to bring firearm parts from the United States into Canada in order to build prohibited weapons here — not to import finished guns, but to import the components and assemble them on this side. Border officers stopped him at the Ambassador Bridge in May 2026 carrying what the agency calls unregulated firearm parts.

The single auto-sear listed in the seizure inventory is the piece that makes that framing matter. An auto-sear is a small component whose only function is to convert a semi-automatic firearm to fully automatic fire, and it is precisely the sort of item that travels as a part rather than as a gun. So are the 116 cartridge magazines, thirty-nine of which the agency says exceed lawful capacity.

What the fifty-three actually are

The headline figure is fifty-three firearms. The release itemises only a fraction of them: six handguns it describes as unlawfully possessed, and two sub-machine guns it describes as unregistered. That accounts for eight. The remaining forty-five firearms are not broken down by type, by restricted or prohibited status, or by whether they were lawfully held. Three of the ten charges are storage offences covering non-restricted, restricted and prohibited categories, which tells the reader that all three categories were present without telling the reader how many of each.

The file behind the file

The CBSA says this investigation grew out of a previous one — a Windsor firearms case in which charges were laid in September 2025, and which the agency has itself linked from this release. That earlier file produced forty-eight firearms, thirty devices for converting semi-automatic firearms to fully automatic, and roughly seventeen thousand rounds of ammunition. What the new release does not say is what connects the two: whether Charette was identified through seized records, through a co-accused, through surveillance, or through the border interception that came later.

None of the ten charges has been tested in court. Frank Charette is presumed innocent. No criminal organization, street gang or outlaw motorcycle club has been named by any agency in connection with this file.