A man nicknamed “AK Guru” has been charged with manufacturing and selling hundreds of machine guns.

RALEIGH, North Carolina — A North Carolina man using the alias “AK Guru” has been charged with manufacturing and selling hundreds of machine guns made from existing and disassembled weapons, federal authorities said.

Earl Carter Jr., 72, is being held by federal authorities on charges of conspiracy to manufacture and traffic in firearms without a license, possession of a machine gun and possession of a firearm by a felon, according to court documents.

Online court records do not indicate whether Carter entered pleas to the charges. An attorney listed in court records did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment on the charges.

The FBI affidavit, which cites a confidential informant, said Carter, whose alias is “AK Guru,” makes machine guns “either by modifying a legal firearm to convert it into a machine gun or by combining parts of a disassembled machine gun to create functioning machine guns.” »

Carter also taught others how to make machine guns to sell, according to an affidavit filed Oct. 18. The informant told the FBI that Carter moved an “astronomical” number of machine guns through his shop and that Carter had “contacts around the world who could smuggle firearms from Europe to the United States,” the affidavit said.

“Carter sold over 1,000 fully automatic AK-47s to various groups in the area, and that the ‘mountain’ people purchased several fully automatic AK-47s per week from Carter,” the affidavit states.

An informant told the FBI that he saw Carter with machine guns in his workshop in the small town of Hamlet, about 80 miles (128 kilometers) east of Charlotte. The informant said the weapons included AK-47 style fully automatic rifles, a Browning M2 .50 caliber belt-fed machine gun, a PPS-43 submachine gun, a Lanchester submachine gun and others, the affidavit states. The informant said Carter asked him to make machine guns for Carter and sell them.

Agents searching Carter’s home, workshop and other buildings seized several AK-style assault rifles and other firearms with components that appeared to make the weapon capable of functioning as a machine gun, the affidavit said.

Carter told agents he knew he was a criminal and was not allowed to have a gun, the affidavit states. He was convicted of using weapons in occupied territory in February 1994.

Carter will be held pending trial, the judge ruled. A trial date has not been set.