Kidus Chane Yohannes, 20, a native of Ethiopia, was charged Tuesday in 4th District Court with five third-degree felony charges in two different cases.

The first case involves one charge of unlawful acquisition or possession of an ATM card. The second case includes four charges of falsifying information for a background check prior to purchasing a handgun.

Yohannes allegedly provided a false alien registration number when he purchased guns at Van Wagenen’s pawn shop in Orem last October, as well as at a Provo pawn shop, according to a police affidavit.

Yohannes was arrested June 8 after his roommates approached police with concerns. They said Yohannes had recently lost his job and spent a lot of time watching violent, execution-style videos on the Internet.

They said he was “consumed with violent depictions of death” and “human execution by gunfire,” according to the police affidavit.

During Orem’s investigation, officers learned Provo police had also been looking at Yohannes for previous traffic arrests and a gun confiscation.

The two agencies began diving into information about his gun purchases and discovered Yohannes had bought several guns, including AK-47s, using two different alien registration numbers.

But Norman Van Wagenen, owner of the Orem pawn shop, said nothing seemed to be wrong.

“Well, he gave us an alien registration number, which the government is now saying was not right,” he said. “But at the time, the government checked it and said it was right. So how do you know when it became not right?”

Van Wagenen said Yohannes had also been pawning guns and buying guns at several other pawn shops, and each store accepted his number or numbers.

The Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification helps facilitate background checks for Utah residents wanting to buy guns, but it couldn’t comment specifically on Yohannes’ case.

The BCI passes information to the Law Enforcement Service Center in Vermont, which does a background check to make sure the number is valid, said Lance Tyler, a supervisor at the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification.

It has not been determined how Yohannes got invalid numbers or how those numbers were approved for gun purchases.

“I don’t think anybody would like to take the blame, but I hope everybody is doing what they’re supposed to,” Tyler said. “There’s a system that’s in place, but if you looked at it hard enough, you could probably see flaws.”

Yohannes, a resident alien, came to Utah under a State Department asylum program several years ago.

He graduated from Provo High School in May 2006 and was admitted to Utah Valley State College during the summer of 2006 as a Utah resident, said Boyd Bauer, director of the International Center at UVSC.