Facebook dance lands gun-toting felon in prison

It looked like fun at the time, but the few minutes that Christopher Brinson spent dancing and waving a gun around in a Facebook Live video will cost him 17½ years in federal prison.

Brinson, 32, who has an extensive arrest record dating back to when he was 11, is a convicted felon who is legally barred from owning, handling or touching a firearm.

So brandishing a firearm in a “selfie” video that streamed live on his friend’s Facebook page last year was not the smartest decision, investigators said.

The Fort Lauderdale man admitted it was him on the video but said the gun — which was never found — was a realistic-looking fake. He pleaded not guilty to a federal charge of being a felon in possession of a weapon.

But the jury didn’t buy it when Brinson went to trial earlier this year in federal court in West Palm Beach. An expert who analyzed the video footage testified the gun was real and the jurors found Brinson guilty.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra sentenced Brinson to the hefty stint in prison.

The gun investigation was launched when FBI agents saw the Facebook Live video, featuring Brinson and a friend singing and dancing on March 20, 2017, outside a convenience store in Fort Lauderdale’s Franklin Park neighborhood.

His defense tried to persuade the judge to go easy on Brinson, arguing in court papers that his criminal history mostly involved drug-related crimes. They said the evidence showed only that he was “dancing on a video with a gun that resembles a real gun, but also resembles a fake gun.”

Prosecutors argued that Brinson got a lot of chances to turn his life around after multiple arrests. They also said there was additional evidence — from photos he “flaunted” on social media later that month — that he had a real firearm.

Brinson’s troubles are not over.

He’s one of four men accused of being part of a “cross-dressing” crew of armed robbers who wore women’s clothing, makeup and wigs when they held up several jewelry stores last year in Florida and Georgia. Brinson and the others deny the allegations and are scheduled to go to trial later this year.

Some of the robberies — at stores in Deerfield Beach, Port St. Lucie, Valdosta, Ga., and Spring Hill near Tampa — were captured on security video. The videos showed Brinson posing as a customer during one of the holdups and men, disguised as women, pointing guns, manhandling staff and stealing valuable jewelry, prosecutors said.