MATTHEW BEST
Boasts on Instagram, YouTube.
WALTER WALKER
Alleged ringleader.
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Even the gunrunners know stop-and-frisk works.
The NYPD took down two smuggling rings that used cheap Chinatown buses to funnel a terrifying array of illegal weapons here from the South — and the thugs were caught on wiretaps warning about stop-and-frisk.
“I can’t take them . . . to my house . . . I’m in Brownsville . . . We got like, whatchamacallit, stop-and-frisk,” a 23-year-old alleged gunrunner was heard saying.
The gun bust — the biggest in city history — netted 254 weapons and 19 suspects in fewer than 12 months, authorities said.
The haul included military-grade machine guns with silencers as large as the weapons themselves and Soviet-era assault rifles with flash and smoke suppressors.
The arsenal’s most powerful weapons — .45-caliber handguns — “could kill an elephant,” said a law-enforcement source.
Up to 14 guns were packed into luggage in one bus trip alone for a tidy $9,700 sale, officials said.
The arms were initially bought for $200 to $300 a pop through two networks — one in South Carolina and the other in North Carolina, states where gun laws are notoriously weak, officials said.
They were resold for an average of $800 each in New York, officials said. One MAC-10 handgun with a 15-bullet clip went for $3,000.
The thugs knew they could get top prices in New York given its strict gun laws, authorities said.
“These guys were just about the quick money. They didn’t care how [the guns] were being used,’’ the source said.
The sting involved one undercover cop making 35 purchases for nearly $160,000 in cash between September and July, officials said.
About three dozen of the weapons had been stolen down South. Most were peddled fully loaded.
Cops said North Carolina ringleader Walter Walker, 29, used a rap studio above the Country Kitchen restaurant in Ocean Hill, Brooklyn, as a headquarters. Authorities had been led to the studio in an unrelated drug probe.
Rapper wannabe Matthew Best, 26, allegedly doubled as his chauffeur and selling buddy.
“Best posted several photos of guns and cash on Instagram, and in the video he posted on YouTube, he boasted, ‘Packing more guns than the Air Force,’ ” noted NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly.
Walker “made trips to New York City practically every week and sometimes multiple times a week just to sell guns,’’ Kelly said.
“Walker would get on a bus in Charlotte and take a ride overnight to New York City with his backpack or duffel bag,’’ Kelly said. “Between last September and this July, he sold 116 guns to our undercover officer.’’
The other ring’s leader, Earl Campbell, 23, dealt with the same middleman, Omole Adedji, 30, authorities said.
Campbell allegedly made it clear he was wary of stop-and-frisk — which a judge last week declared unconstitutional.
When a buyer tells him he can’t meet, Campbell is allegedly heard on tape saying he’d keep the guns in South Carolina instead of bringing them to a Brownsville hideout and risk getting frisked.
Three days later, on June 12, “Campbell sold the undercover officer a .40-caliber assault rifle and four semiautomatic handguns,’’ Kelly said.
Campbell’s girlfriend, Kendall “Zebra Girl” Jones, 22, helped ferry the guns, authorities alleged.
Once, they said, she smuggled an SKS rifle by bus to New York by stashing its parts in her zebra-striped suitcase. But she had trouble reassembling it for her undercover-cop buyer, even after downloading an instruction video on her smartphone, officials said.
“The whole episode . . . is horrifying and comical,” said the city’s special narcotics prosecutor, Bridget Brennan.
The cop bought the rifle, similar to one used in the Newtown school massacre, for $1,100.
Mayor Bloomberg said the seizure had “no doubt” saved lives.
“Every New Yorker, in every part of our city, owes a debt of thanks to all those involved in this investigation,” he said.
The bust took in about 100 more guns than the city’s previous record, which occurred in Brooklyn about three years ago, law-enforcement sources said.