The owner of a Texas company that sells plans to make untraceable 3-D printed guns has been released on bail after being arrested in Taiwan last week.
Police said he flew to the country after learning he was being investigated for allegedly having sex with an underage girl.
The U.S. Marshals Service said Cody Wilson, 30, was booked into Harris County Jail in Houston early Sunday and was being held on $150,000 bond.
He was arrested Friday at a hotel in Taiwan by local police and is now facing sexual assault charges in Austin, according to a statement from the U.S. Marshals service.
But CBS reported that Wilson was bonded out on Monday morning after spending just a few hours behind bars.
Cody Wilson, center rear, is seen at a police car in Taipei on Friday last week. Authorities in Taiwan arrested Wilson, who is wanted in the U.S. over underage sex accusations
Cody Wilson, with Defense Distributed, holds a 3D-printed gun called the Liberator at his shop, in Austin, Texas
Authorities said Wilson met the girl through the website SugarDaddyMeet.com. According to an affidavit, the girl said they met in the parking lot of an Austin coffee shop in August and then drove to a hotel. The girl told investigators that Wilson paid her $500 after they had sex and then dropped her off at a Whataburger restaurant.
‘We are glad that Cody is back in Texas again where we can work with him on his case. That’s our focus right now,’ Wilson’s attorney, Samy Khalil, said in a statement Sunday night.
Wilson is the owner of Austin-based Defense Distributed. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia had sued the Trump administration to dissolve a settlement it reached with the company over allowing it to disseminate its designs for making a 3D-printable gun.
Wilson walking through a hotel lobby in Taipei just hours before authorities in Taiwan arrested him
Wilson, pictured at a hotel shop in Taiwan last week, has previously been at the center of a storm over his 3D-printed guns
The lawsuit by mostly Democratic state attorneys general argued that such weapons could be used by criminals or terrorists.
A federal court last month barred Wilson from posting the designs online for free. He then began selling them for any amount of money to U.S. customers through his website.
Wilson, a self-described ‘crypto-anarchist,’ has said ‘governments should live in fear of their citizenry.’
Law enforcement officials worry the guns are easy to conceal and are untraceable since there’s no requirement for the firearms to have serial numbers. Gun industry experts have said the printed guns are a modern method of legally assembling a firearm at home without serial numbers.
The 3D printed gun businessman was apprehended by police at a hotel on Guangzhou Street in Taipei’s Wanhua District