Former Marines convicted in half-baked neo-Nazi plot to blow up power grid: officials

Three men, including two former Marines, have been convicted in a plot with ties to white supremacists to blow up the power grid in the Northwestern United States, prosecutors said.

The years-long plot — masterminded by suspects Paul James Kryscuk, 38; Liam Collins, 25; and Justin Wade Hermanson, 25 — was part of a larger, violent extremist plan aimed at destroying the power plant, ABC 6 reported.

According to federal prosecutors, Collins and Hermanson were members of the same U.S. Marine unit at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, when they hatched the plot.

Collins was an active poster on an online neo-Nazi forum that he used to recruit members for a paramilitary group he claimed was a “modern-day SS,” prosecutors said.

He had joined the Marines to further his cause and claimed he would use his earnings to fund the group, the indictment said.

In 2017, he met Kryscuk, a New York resident, through the forum. The two discussed the idea of ​​forming a guerrilla organization that would “slowly take back the land that is rightfully ours” through acts of domestic terror, the outlet reported.

“We will have to go out into the streets and deal as many blows as possible to the remaining power structure to keep it in line,” Kryscuk said in a message accompanying the indictment.

The toxic twins recruited others, including Hermanson, and studied an earlier attack by another armed group on another power plant, the Justice Department said.

The aspiring terrorists were also involved in illegal arms trafficking, illegally manufacturing and selling weapons and stealing other military equipment between 2017 and 2020.

Four years ago, they met in Boise, Idaho, for a live-weapons training session that included giving the Hitler salute, carrying assault weapons and wearing skull masks associated with the Atomwaffen Division, another group of wannabe Nazis, according to videos of the affair.

Authorities eventually found a handwritten note from Kryscuk listing 12 locations in Idaho and other states where a transformer, substation or other critical energy infrastructure was located, federal officials said.

Kryscuk, who was seen at several Black Lives Matter protests that summer, also talked to another conspirator about shooting protesters, the indictment said.

The three men were arrested in late 2020 and early 2021 and later pleaded guilty, ABC reported.

Last Thursday, they were sentenced to long prison terms for their crimes.

Collins will spend the next ten years behind bars for aiding and abetting the interstate transportation of unregistered firearms.

Kryscuk was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for aiding and abetting the destruction of a power plant, and Hermanson was sentenced to just under two years in prison for aiding and abetting the manufacture and interstate transportation of firearms.

Two others — Joseph Maurino, 25; and Jordan Duncan — have also pleaded guilty to crimes related to the plot, ABC reported.