Ruby Ridge to Adamiak: ATF’s Troubled History With Criminal Informants
ATF’s reliance on confidential informants, including convicted felons facing fresh criminal charges, raises a recurring question: What happens when the government builds a firearms case around someone with powerful incentives to deliver results? Federal reviews have documented failures in the bureau’s disclosure and oversight of informants. Patrick Tate Adamiak’s prosecution brings those concerns into focus again.
At Ruby Ridge, a Justice Department review identified failures to disclose an ATF informant’s full compensation arrangement. At Waco, ATF’s own chronology describes a confidential source tipping a reporter about the impending operation before the bureau changed the raid date. In 2017, the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded that ATF’s confidential-informant oversight “required significant improvement,” identifying weaknesses in recordkeeping, payment tracking, and review of higher-risk sources.
In Adamiak’s case, the government relied on Gregory Pruess, a repeatedly convicted felon. According to the government’s appellate brief filed in July, 2024, ATF found Pruess unlawfully possessing two pistols and a rifle, secured his cooperation to avoid criminal charges, and paid him about $8,000. An earlier ATF affidavit from April, 2022, however, said no promises or guarantees were made.
Adamiak says Pruess delivered parts to his home, then introduced him by email to a man using the name Rick Hayes. The government says Hayes was Pruess himself, operating under an identity created at an ATF agent’s direction. Adamiak spent nearly four years in federal custody before President Donald Trump pardoned him in September 2026. His case raises the same accountability questions that have followed ATF’s informant practices for decades: how was the source vetted and supervised, what incentives shaped his conduct, and what was disclosed to the defense?
Gregory Pruess’s Criminal Record and Documented ATF Cooperation
ATF informant Gregory Pruess had a criminal record and powerful incentives to deliver results—raising serious questions about his reliability.
The last conviction on Pruess’s record before the Adamiak case is United States v. Pruess, 703 F.3d 242 (4th Cir. 2012). He pleaded guilty to possessing ammunition as a convicted felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and reserved the right to argue that the ban could not be applied to him because he was, he said, nonviolent. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz rejected that claim and affirmed on December 31, 2012. The district court had sentenced him to 21 months and a $550 fine.
Reading the 2012 opinion provides the history behind that plea. Pruess was a licensed firearms dealer and collector of weapons and military memorabilia, and he owned and operated a military museum. His first experience with law enforcement came in 1994, after an undercover operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the government charged him with twelve firearms offenses tied to his possession and transfer of three grenades and a mortar round, all with obliterated identification and lot numbers. He pleaded guilty to one felony count. The court sentenced him to twelve months.
Soon after his release, he went back to arms dealing as a felon. The Fourth Circuit wrote that he sold UZI submachine-gun barrels, M-16 components, M-122 remote firing devices, AK-47 machine guns, grenades, and other weapons, including stolen weapons, to undercover agents and a cooperating witness. On one sale, he brought extra guns and told the agents the guns were for protection, or in case anything went wrong with the deal. Authorities arrested him and charged him with twenty-five firearms violations. This was tied to a ring stealing weapons from Camp Lejeune. He pleaded guilty to eighteen counts. The court sentenced him to 108 months and 60 months, to run concurrently. In 1999, shortly before that sentencing, he ordered a pistol online using an altered firearms license. He pleaded guilty to an additional count. The court added eight months.
After he got out, he tried to buy belted ammunition, grenades, and parachute flares from a confidential informant, knowing they were likely stolen. Agents arrested him after he paid for the ammunition. That purchase is the 922(g) conviction the Fourth Circuit affirmed in 2012.
His 2009 judgment barred him from any business or hobby involving firearms or ammunition and from acting as an informant without the court’s permission. Those restrictions likely ended when supervised release ended around 2013, though public dockets could not confirm that date. Even so, the government’s brief in the Adamiak appeal describes Pruess as running a gun store around 2020 and 2021.
Parts Delivery and the Rick Hayes Introduction
The government’s brief and Adamiak do agree on how he met Gregory Pruess. Around November 2020, Adamiak started buying firearm parts from Pruess, who operated a gun store in North Carolina. Adamiak says those were USGI parts, and that the tab ran $60,000 to $70,000: hammers, springs, barrels, heat shields, and pins for AR-15s, M240s, M2HBs, and MK46s, plus a tripod.
Adamiak says Pruess delivered the parts to his house. That, he says, is when Pruess saw the parts kits.
According to Adamiak, it was after that meeting that Pruess introduced him through email to a man called Rick Hayes. Pruess said he had met Hayes at the Knob Creek, the Kentucky machine-gun shoot, and that Hayes wanted Adamiak’s extra parts kits for movie productions. Adamiak sold him kits. Hayes wanted more. Adamiak says he pointed Hayes to online listings because he didn’t have any extra kits. Hayes said he did not know how to use GunBroker and asked Adamiak to “bird-dog” the kits for him. Adamiak was already buying an M79 from a licensed dealer on GunBroker. That dealer had PPSh-41 kits and offered a deal on the kits and the M79 together. Adamiak says those are the kits that went to Rick Hayes.
According to the government’s later brief, between July 2021, when Adamiak met Pruess at his home, and October, 2021, ATF found that Pruess unlawfully possessed two pistols and a rifle. The government’s Adamiak brief says he agreed to cooperate to avoid criminal charges and was paid about $8,000. No federal charge from that search appears on the public record. The ATF affidavit filed in 2022 states that no promises or guarantees were made to Pruess regarding his cooperation in Adamiak’s case. The government’s own documents do not agree with each other.
That contradiction is not a paperwork quibble. Confidential informant cases turn on what the source was promised, what he was paid, and what he still had to lose. A jury that hears “no promises were made” hears a different case than a jury that hears the source was cooperating to stay out of prison and was paid thousands of dollars to deliver.
Who Was “Rick Hayes”?
The government’s brief and ATF Special Agent William Hairston Jr.’s affidavit tell the Hayes introduction differently.
According to the ATF agent’s affidavit, in October 2021, Pruess told ATF Special Agent William Hairston Jr. that Adamiak was trafficking machine guns on the internet and that Pruess had seen what he thought were destructive devices in Adamiak’s house. Hairston directed Pruess to open an email account under the name Rick Hayes so he could deal with Adamiak without revealing his identity. As Hayes, Pruess asked about “any kind of saw-cut machine guns that were easily put back together.”
In November 2021, ATF used him to buy a PPSh-41 receiver for $2,200. Controlled purchases continued into 2022. Agents then searched Adamiak’s properties.
On the government’s account, Rick Hayes was not a Knob Creek contact shopping for movie props. Rick Hayes was, in fact, Gregory Pruess.
“Agent Hairston directed Pruess to create an email account using a fake name, ‘Rick Hayes,’ to communicate with Adamiak without revealing Pruess’s identity.” As Hayes, Pruess asked about “any kind of saw-cut machine guns that were easily put back together.”
In November 2021, ATF used him to buy a PPSh-41 receiver for $2,200. The brief says the receiver had a single saw cut and could be put back together with minimal effort. A second November buy was five PPS-43 receivers for $7,050. Counts One and Two were the PPSh-41 sold to “Rick Hayes” in March 2022, the government brief stated.
Pruess Denies Helping ATF
Pruess, contacted by AmmoLand News, denied cooperating with the ATF even though his testimony under oath shows that he did, and the government called him a Confidential Informant.
“I don’t know what ATF did or didn’t do. I gave no assistance. That’s why I went to prison each time,” Pruess wrote in an email to AmmoLand.
Pruess said agents came after him on three occasions because he would not give in, that they offered him chances to “save myself,” and that he “did the honorable thing” by refusing. “They kept telling me if I don’t cooperate, I’ll regret it later, and they were correct on that.” He wrote that he never would cooperate with ATF “despite being beaten to death legally by them over the years.”
However, looking at the 2012 opinion and Pruess’ record, there is much that his email omits. Those documents describe a man who pleaded guilty in 1994, pleaded guilty to eighteen counts after going back to dealing, picked up eight more months for an altered dealer license, and then pleaded guilty again after paying for ammunition he believed was stolen. On top of all that, the Adamiak brief says ATF found two pistols and a rifle in Gregory Pruess’s house, asked him to cooperate to avoid charges, and paid him about $8,000.
Pruess’ denial stands in stark contrast to the government’s record of his legal issues and contact with the ATF.
Then, Pruess gave AmmoLand a third origin story. He wrote that people who turned out to be undercover asked him for parts kits, that he did not have any, and that he directed them to Adamiak’s GunBroker ads.
“Sure wish I never made that referral,” Pruess wrote to AmmoLand. “They asked me while they were undercover if I knew anybody else that had stuff, and I pointed to other people on GunBroker… that is how I got tangled up in this mess.”
A customer who spent $60,000 to $70,000 on USGI parts, a man introduced via email as a Knob Creek buyer, and a paid confidential source are three different facts. Adamiak describes the first two. The government’s brief describes the third. Pruess describes a referral he now regrets.
In the same email to AmmoLand, Pruess described himself as a witness. Pruess wrote that he was subpoenaed to testify, that he was told the government would handle any intimidation, and that further reporting could draw a criminal charge for “intimidation of a federal witness.” He also wrote that he would take legal action if he saw “any nonsense.” A request for comment is not witness intimidation.
If accurate, the subpoena claim is itself an admission that he was in the case as a witness. It does not sit easily next to “I gave no assistance.” AmmoLand News asked which proceeding he was subpoenaed for. Pruess did not reply.
Pruess also offered his account of the evidence presented in Adamiak’s case. He wrote that he used to be a destructive-device manufacturer and that the RPG-7 he was shown in the courtroom did not have the trigger-group parts destroyed or a hole cut through the bore the same size as the bore, “only a very small hole.” He wrote that the firing mechanism was not welded shut and that no crossbars were welded inside, “as was the regulation.”
On the receivers, Pruess wrote that Adamiak was selling improperly single-saw-cut receivers, cut once with a fine blade, and that “you could have glued it back together and it would function more than one shot at a time.” He wrote that he could “only figure” the parts came from Europe, because a receipt from another parts dealer “would have been the end of his case.” Those are his claims about what he was shown in court. They restate the government’s trial theory. They are not findings. Adamiak says the PPSh kits came from a licensed GunBroker dealer, in a package deal with an M79 he was already buying, and that he sold those kits to the man Pruess introduced as Rick Hayes.
Pruess made one allegation in the emails with AmmoLand that was initially nowhere to be found in the public appellate record. Pruess wrote that Adamiak “got so much time because of witness intimidation” before sentencing, and that Adamiak had not mentioned it. No sentencing memorandum or appellate filing reviewed for this story establishes intimidation by Adamiak. Until a docket entry says it, it is an allegation from the informant, not a fact about the sentence.
After further investigation, AmmoLand found the only allegation of witness intimidation in the case did not involve Adamiak. The government cited a video by Mr. Guns & Gear that named Pruess, but the judge rejected the motion because Pruess’s name was already in the public record.
Pruess Offers Saw-Cut Parts Kits for Sale
Pruess did not deny selling kits. He wrote that “all the few little parts kits that I have sold off, trying to raise money to survive, were legally imported by the thousands,” unlike what he says Adamiak sold. Gregory Pruess remains active on the Sturmgewehr forums, where he has posted since 2016, mostly under the name g36kinnc, including for-sale ads for submachine-gun parts kits.
AmmoLand News contacted him under an alias and asked about kits. Pruess offered to sell a British Sterling kit for $850 and an Italian Franchi 9mm submachine-gun kit for $900. Both were described as saw-cut. A saw cut does not, by itself, make a kit illegal. Legality turns on when the cut was made, how it was made, and whether the parts can be readily restored under the National Firearms Act (NFA). The government’s brief says Pruess asked Adamiak to supply the same class of parts while working for ATF. Pruess closed that part of the email by blaming Congress, not the seller: “None of that stuff should be illegal. Saw cut or not.”
Pruess also blamed Adamiak’s freedom on publicity. “He has just gotten extremely lucky. Social media lobbied enough to believe what he was saying and got him a pardon,” he wrote. “Now it looks like he’s screwing it up fast and hard sadly.” He wrote that he was glad Adamiak “survived it with a good outcome,” and added that his own case had no GoFundMe and no pardon.
Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Documented ATF Informant Failures
Confidential informants have figured in the record of several of ATF’s most controversial operations, from Ruby Ridge and Waco to the case of Patrick Tate Adamiak. Their roles differed, and their presence alone does not prove they caused the failures that followed. But these cases raise a recurring question: when the government relies on a source with a criminal record, personal incentives, or influence over a target, what safeguards ensure that source is reliable—and not driving the investigation?
At Ruby Ridge, a Justice Department review flagged the failure to disclose all aspects of an ATF informant’s compensation arrangement during the prosecution. At Waco, a confidential source tipped a reporter that “something big” might happen at the Branch Davidian compound; ATF’s chronology says the bureau then moved its planned raid from Monday to Sunday. Years later, the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded that ATF’s oversight of its confidential-informant program “required significant improvement,” citing weaknesses in recordkeeping, payment tracking, and review of higher-risk informants.
Adamiak’s Pardon Leaves Accountability Questions Unanswered
The government’s theory and Adamiak’s are not reconcilable, and a jury accepted the government’s. What is reconcilable, because it is in the government’s own papers, is the informant’s motive as the brief describes it. He had unlawful guns in his house. He was asked to cooperate to avoid charges. He was paid about $8,000. His email denies that account and, in the same message, warns a reporter off as a federal witness. Adamiak says the man who delivered $8,000 to $10,000 in USGI parts to his house is the same man who, a month later, introduced Rick Hayes. The brief says Rick Hayes was the deliveryman. Those two sentences cannot both be the whole story. The Fourth Circuit had already written the earlier half of Pruess’s record in 2012.
For many Americans who distrust the ATF, cases like Ruby Ridge and Adamiak’s reinforce a longstanding concern: informants with criminal records and personal incentives can become powerful forces in investigations, while the public may never see the full terms of their cooperation. Adamiak’s pardon ended his prison sentence; it did not resolve the conflict between the government’s account that Pruess cooperated to avoid charges and received about $8,000 and the ATF affidavit stating that no promises were made. Until that contradiction—and what the defense was told about Pruess’s role—is explained, the central question remains: what safeguards keep an informant from shaping the case the government brings?
AmmoLand News contacted ATF’s media office for comment, but received no response before publication. This article will be updated if ATF responds.
About John Crump
Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and constitutional activist with more than 26 years of experience in networking and cybersecurity for major Fortune 100 companies. John has written about firearms, the Constitution, and cybersecurity, and has interviewed people from all walks of life. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons. Follow him on X at @right2bear, or at www.crumpy.com.