Kenneth Finch Jr., 31, of Springfield, was sentenced to five years in federal prison for illegal gun possession.
This is an update to a story posted at 5:49 p.m.
SPRINGFIELD - Within a day of being arrested for selling a loaded gun to an undercover state trooper, Kenneth Finch Jr. was on a recorded jailhouse phone line brokering his next sale.
According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Katharine Wagner, Finch was arrested in 2016 by federal agents for the sale he made a year earlier in a Friendly's parking lot. He then made a call coercing "one of his girlfriends" to sell another gun on the street for $50.
"After he was arraigned and detained in Franklin County jail, he called his girlfriend -- or one of his girlfriends -- to find a gun he had secreted in her apartment," Wagner said of Finch, who was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison for illegal gun possession.
Wagner told U.S. District Judge Mark Mastroianni that Finch had stashed the gun in the 19-year-old's kitchen closet without telling her.
"For $50 he was willing to put a firearm out on the streets of Springfield, to do whatever with it," Wagner said, "and be so audacious as to do so from jail."
Wagner asked that Finch be sentenced to 71 months in prison, while defense lawyer Thomas J. O'Connor argued for a lesser sentence.
O'Connor conceded that "a string of bad decisions" led Finch to federal court, but said his client has been a model prisoner and has enrolled in many self-improvement programs while behind bars.
Finch pleaded guilty in September to two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He previously was convicted of the same crime in North Carolina and served a short jail term, Wagner said.
At an earlier court hearing in the 2016 Massachusetts case, prosecutors played an excerpt of Finch's conversation with the undercover trooper.
FINCH: What up my g (the informant) told me to hit you up.
UC: Chillen ... this Junior?
FINCH: Yeah.
UC: What up papi I hit up (the informant) he said yuh got a hammer (gun) for me?
FINCH: Yeah I told him I need 12 ($1,200) for it
UC: U got a pic ... 12 is heavy money, man. U got 1 or 2?
FINCH: I got 2 but I need one for myself.
UC: Aii i respect that. I need to look at it first papi.