Three men with white supremacist ties, including two former U.S. Marines, were sentenced to prison last week after plotting to destroy a power station in the northwestern United States, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
The men, Paul James Kryscuk, 38; Liam Collins, 25; and Justin Wade Hermanson, 25; received separate sentences on Thursday for charges related to what the Justice Department described as a racially motivated scheme to attack a power grid.
The men gathered information on weapons and explosives, manufactured firearms and stole military gear, prosecutors said.
Mr. Kryscuk, of Boise, Idaho, was found in October 2020 with a handwritten list of about a dozen places in Idaho and surrounding states that were home to components of the power grid for the northwestern United States, prosecutors said.
The Justice Department did not disclose details about where the men wanted to carry out an attack or their ultimate goal. Sentencing documents on the public court system were not available.
Mr. Collins, of Johnston, R.I., received the longest sentence of 10 years for aiding and abetting the interstate transportation of unregistered firearms. Mr. Kryscuk was sentenced to six years and six months for conspiracy to destroy an energy facility. Mr. Hermanson, of Swansboro, N.C., was sentenced to one year and nine months for conspiracy to manufacture firearms and ship interstate.
Mr. Kryscuk and Mr. Collins met in early 2017 through an online forum for neo-Nazis called “Iron March,” where they shared posts regarding white supremacist ideologies, the Justice Department said.
After the forum was shut down in 2017, the two began communicating on an encrypted messaging application and recruited others, including Mr. Hermanson, to join them.
The trio completed different tasks for the attack, according to the government.
Mr. Kryscuk manufactured firearms. Mr. Collins, who was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, stole military gear. Mr. Hermanson, who was in the same Marine unit as Mr. Collins at the camp, helped to coordinate weapons sales and research a previous attempted attack on a power grid attack, according to court papers.
The group conducted training in the desert near Boise, Idaho, according to the Justice Department. Mr. Kryscuk and other members recruited for the attack produced a propaganda video of their training, which featured masked individuals firing assault-type rifles, and ended with a Nazi symbol and the words “Come home white man.”
Others who joined the trio in the plot include another former Marine, Jordan Duncan, 29, who pleaded guilty in June to aiding and abetting the manufacturing of a firearm, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
A fifth defendant, Joseph Maurino, pleaded guilty in April 2023 to conspiracy to manufacture firearms and ship them between states.
Mr. Maurino’s lawyer declined to comment on a pending case. The other defendants’ lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.
This is not the first time a white supremacist group has targeted power grids.
Three men pleaded guilty in 2022 to plotting an attack on power grids across the country in the hopes of instigating a race war. In 2023, federal law enforcement officials arrested two people accused of conspiring to destroy the power grid in Baltimore in a racist scheme.
A 2022 study by George Washington University researchers found that between 2016 and 2022, 13 individuals associated with white supremacy groups were charged with planning attacks on the energy sector.
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