3 men with white supremacist ties sentenced in plan to attack power station

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 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.

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 were not available.

Collins, of Johnston, Rhode Island, received the longest sentence of 10 years for aiding and abetting the interstate transportation of unregistered firearms. Kryscuk was sentenced to six years and six months for conspiracy to destroy an energy facility. Hermanson, of Swansboro, North Carolina, was sentenced to one year and nine months for conspiracy to manufacture firearms and ship interstate.

Kryscuk and 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 Hermanson, to join them.

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.

Maurino’s lawyer declined to comment on a pending case. The other defendants’ lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2024 The New York Times Company