An East Palestine man has been cleared of charges filed after federal agents claim they caught him with unregistered firearm silencers for a second time in two years.

A jury in U.S. District Court found Bent See not guilty of the charges following a trial this week.

See was arrested on August 12 after a search of his Bacon Avenue office and machine shop turned up what federal agents described as 196 silencers.

An agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says that See told investigators that he had been making the devices for more than a year, then selling them on eBay for $50 to $80 apiece.

See argued the the devices were “muzzle breaks”, and challenged ATF claims that they were unregistered silencers, bearing no serial numbers.

According to the ATF, a silencer is any device for silencing, muffling, or diminishing the report of a firearm.

At the time of the search, See was still on probation from a 2014 conviction for possessing unregistered firearms after he sold an ATF undercover agent three kits that could be assembled to make a device used to diminish the report of a firearm.

During that investigation, agents from the U.S. Postal Service and ATF searched See's Signal Road home in Fairfield Township.

In December 2014, See was sentenced to six months electronically monitored house arrest and placed on probation for five years.