SF Tre-4 arms dealer gets 51 month sentence for firearms possession
A San Francisco gang member whose criminal past includes a car-to-car shooting on the Bay Bridge, carjacking and assault, and whose criminal present includes near-constant firearms possession, was sentenced to 51 months’ imprisonment today in federal court after being found with more guns.
Lipine Faafiu was arrested by SFPD and probation officials in October 2023. In his apartment they found a loaded .45 Glock 30 equipped with an extended magazine and a loaded 9mm Springfield pistol along with numerous rounds of ammunition including 5.56 rounds fitted in a rifle magazine.
He had earlier pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and admitted four probation violations. Prosecutors described him as an “arms dealer” for San Francisco gangs.
“He was a walking armory of weapons and then he has an affiliation with this gang Tre-4,” said U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco federal courthouse this afternoon.
“You put firearms and ammunition together and it’s a terrible combination.”
Faafiu’s is the latest case to be affected by a remarkable recent decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which stated that convictions under California’s assault law do not count as crimes of violence.
Its consequence was that Faafiu’s 2018 assault conviction – for kicking a defenseless woman in the face and head while his accomplices kidnapped her child – was no longer able to be considered by the court as a violent crime for the purposes of sentencing calculations. He thus received a sentence more than a year less than prosecutors anticipated at the time they inked a plea deal with him.
A track record of near-constant firearms possession
In July 2015 Faafiu was convicted of carrying a concealed firearm and evading a peace officer after he was involved in a rolling gun battle across the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Occupants of the van he was driving had exchanged fire with another car while being pursued by police at speeds of nearly 100mph.
In April 2018 he was convicted of possessing “over a dozen” firearms after SFPD officers saw he was posting gun images from his Instagram account. These included a video of him holding a Glock 26 equipped with an extended magazine while an M4 sub-machine gun and a rifle rested on a bench.
Another Instagram image on his account was of a Glock handgun laying in an incubator in which his twin babies were sleeping taken at the Kaiser Hospital on Geary Street in San Francisco. On Faafiu’s phone were numerous photographs of children handling firearms with their fingers on the triggers.
In April 2017, while on bail prior to his 2018 conviction, Faafiu was arrested for kicking a woman in the face and head while she was on the ground and then assisting in the kidnapping of her two year old child. He was convicted of assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury and given two years in prison.
In June 2020, while serving a four year sentence for the 2018 federal firearms conviction, he was granted compassionate release because of his higher risk from COVID while incarcerated.
He was returned to prison in February 2022 after associating with Tre-4 gang members and being found with ammunition and released again in October of that year.
On October 25 2023 police and probation officials arrested him at an apartment in Richmond in which was a .45 Glock 30 equipped with an extended magazine and a 9mm Springfield handgun plus several rounds of assorted ammunition.
A central gang figure
After his release in October 2023 Faafiu immediately resumed associating with fellow gang members.
In August 2023 he attended the funeral of 20-year-old Tre-4 gang member Tahmon Wilson in Oakland at which a shooting occurred in which another Tre-4 gang member, Taivale Tatualasti, was killed. Another funeral attendant drove drove the mortally-wounded Ttautalasti to the hospital in Faafiu’s Kia sedan.
It was Faafiu’s phone which allowed San Francisco police investigators to link a defendant in a gang shooting case – Philip Stewart – to his social media monickers and thus connect him to an attempted murder in the Bayview district.
This afternoon Faafiu was sentenced to 51 months imprisonment – a term jointly recommended by prosecution and defense attorneys.
“It is lenient,” observed U.S. District Judge William Alsup of the proposed sentence length, “but it’s in the ballpark of reasonable.”
“There were some very serious weapons found in his possession – and he’s admitted it.”
Ultimately the judge was persuaded that Faafiu’s various medical ailments warranted his agreement with the sentence.
Faafiu told the court that after he completes his sentence he wants to move to American Samoa.
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