NYC hospital security guard and son charged with Iron Pipeline gun running scheme

Molly Crane-Newman, New York Daily News on Jun 23, 2026

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NEW YORK — A New York hospital security guard and his son were indicted alongside two others in Manhattan this week for allegedly funneling scores of guns to the city and, unwittingly, into the hands of an undercover NYPD detective.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the charges at a press conference Monday alongside NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny and members of the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives New York field division.

“This was a trafficking network led by a father and son duo, with the help of two others from Georgia, who were moving guns into our city while trying to stay under the radar,” Kenny said, declining to specify which hospital.

“The son had no prior criminal history at all, but according to this investigation, he was the gun runner — moving firearms from Georgia to New York to sell them on our streets. His father was a hospital security guard here in New York, and according to the charges, he helped keep this gun pipeline open.”

Kenny declined to say what hospital the father worked at.

Bragg said weapons sold across five separate transactions were valued at more than $46,000 and trafficked up the so-called Iron Pipeline, the East Coast corridor where illegal guns are transported from the South. The sales were coordinated by 34-year-old Daniel Vern Joly, who, on several occasions, brought them with him on a Greyhound bus, authorities alleged.

“Some of the sales occurred literally blocks from where we stand right now in the heart of Chinatown, which, as you know, is a very busy area with lots of tourists and commuters going to and from work,” Bragg said, noting other sales were made in Brooklyn by Vern Joly’s dad, Daniel Joly, 53. “These were not sales carried out in a dark warehouse somewhere on the edge of our city.”

Vern Joly, 34, of Covington, met the undercover officer on the mouth of the Manhattan Bridge on Canal St. near Forsyth St. on the first day of April and sold him 10 firearms and ammunition valued at $10,800 while inside the cop’s parked car, charging papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court allege.

Among the batch was a semiautomatic pistol modified with a forced reset trigger and affixed with a flashlight, authorities said.

Vern Joly allegedly met the cop again on April 21 at the same spot with another 10 firearms in tow, this time including a Glock 23 .40 caliber pistol with an accompanying machine gun conversion device.

The sales were among several allegedly carried out between March and May of this year facilitated by the father and son and their associates, Brooklyn-based Johnny Philogene, 37, and Georgia man Deashawn Ross, 25. Authorities seized a total of 83 guns — all but 10 of them in the city — during the probe.

All four men are charged with conspiracy and criminal sale of a firearm, among other offenses, in a 56-count indictment.

At their Manhattan Supreme Criminal Court arraignments, Vern Joly was ordered held without bail while his father was ordered held on $250,000 bond. Philogene and Ross remain in custody in Georgia awaiting extradition.

Attorneys for Vern Joly and Joly did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment. The Daily News could not identify lawyers for Philogene and Ross.

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