Are Overseas Nazis Recruiting Your Kids on Roblox?

Molly talks about the recently unsealed case against the Albanian racist who recruited American teens in a Roblox chat to Zoombomb California city council meetings.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome back to it could
happen here. I'm your occasional host, Molly Conger, and it's
just me today. But I've got a weird one for
you now. I don't know if you remember, but a
few months ago I did an episode about a ring
of Hitler loving zoom bombers running a national campaign to

(00:23):
disrupt public meetings. Those guys were mostly members of the
Goyam Defense League, an anti Semitic group of freaks who
just love getting a rise out of people. They were
calling themselves the City Council Death Squad, and they've disrupted
hundreds of virtual public meetings from coast to coast over
the last year, everything from zoning boards in New Jersey
to city council meetings in California, even dipping their toe

(00:47):
into messing with online meetings of alcoholics anonymous. They mostly
seem motivated by their insatiable need to force strangers to
hear them say the N word, But I do think
they understand that their behavior limits people's access to local government.
Many of the cities they targeted responded by ending virtual
participation in government meetings. That means fewer people participate. It's

(01:08):
harder to engage with local government, and people just generally
feel less safe and less motivated to pursue the kinds
of redress available to them through local democracy. And I'm
glad we did the episode. I heard from people in
maybe a dozen cities all over the country who found
the episode online when they were trying to figure out
what the hell happened at their own meeting and the
guy's doing it. Liked the episode so much that now

(01:29):
they use my name when they call into meetings to
scream slurs, which is a less positive outcome, But what
can you do. I assume if the mayor of Redlands,
California googles me, he'll figure out I wasn't the one
doing holocaust denial at his meeting. But overall, this seems
like the kind of thing that we be prosecutable, especially
considering we know the real names of many of the

(01:49):
group's ringleaders. Well, someone has finally been indicted for orchestrating
hateful zoom bombing and virtual city council meetings, But it
isn't them. It's something much much weirder. Last month, FEDS
unsealed an indictment against a man named Mohammad al Hashemi.
He's a Syrian national from Albania currently living in England,

(02:12):
and according to the federal prosecutor, he was the mastermind
behind a zoom bombing ring that targeted the Fresno City
Council in the summer of twenty twenty. He's been charged
with one count of engaging in repeated harassing communication, one
count of engaging in anonymous telecommunications harassment, three counts of
a classic eighteen USC. Eight seventy five C transmitting threatening communications,

(02:34):
and one count of conspiracy for doing all of the above. Right,
So there's a conspiracy, and then those other charges represent
the overt acts of that conspiracy. Now again, I'm not
a lawyer. I'll tell you that every time. I don't
know all the laws, and so this is the first
time I'm realizing that harassing someone by phone is a

(02:55):
federal crime. I mean, it makes sense, right, of course,
that's illegal at the federal level too. I just didn't
think about that the last time we were talking about
zoom bombing. I mean, the obvious charge is interstate threats.
If you make a threat using a phone, the Internet,
or the mail, that's federal territory. But prosecutors are sometimes
a little gun shy about threats. They want a slam
dunk case. They want a true threat, right, something that

(03:18):
is undeniably an actual threat, before they'll bring a case
like that. So I thought they'd have to get a
little creative if they wanted to indict zoom bombers. But
if you're just talking about harassing phone calls, it's actually
pretty straightforward to bring a federal case against the guys
doing this. So two of the charges of the indictment
are for different subsections of forty seven USC. Two twenty

(03:40):
three Obscene or harassing phone calls Subsection A one c
is making a telephone call or utilizing a telecommunications device, right,
So that means it doesn't have to be a literal telephone.
It can be a zoom call, it can be in
any kind of telecommunications device like text message, et cetera,
whether or not conversation or communication ensues, which means you know,

(04:01):
repeated harassing hang up calls. Count two, you don't even
have to say anything without disclosing his identity and with
the intent to abuse, threatn or harass a specific person. Right.
So this subsection is specific to the fact that they
were using fake names and then subsection A one E
is making repeated telephone calls or repeatedly initiating communication with
the telecommunications device during which conversation or communication ensues solely

(04:25):
to harass any specific person. Both of those counts carry
a maximum sentence of two years, and they're usually just
punished with a fine. Not that serious. The other counts
are a little more serious. Interstate threatening communications can get
you up to five years per count, and some of
these calls had some pretty violent language. I'm interested to
see how they move forward with the threats, though the

(04:46):
actual intent or ability to carry out a threat doesn't
necessarily matter if the person the threat was made to
was in reasonable fear from it. But I'm sure we'll see.
It argued that he was in Albania, he never planned
to go to Fresno to hurt people. The obvious counter
to the though, is that he did literally say he
was in Fresno, and there was no obvious indication to
the victims that that wasn't true. And he's also charged

(05:07):
with conspiracy. The indictment refers multiple times to unnamed co conspirators,
so this isn't just one guy making racist, praying phone calls.
This is an organized and intentional conspiracy to engage in
harassment and threats. That conspiracy is a little grim. The
FBI in the UK's Metropolitan Police Force did find an

(05:28):
interview at least nine members of the group. They're saying
al Hacemi was leading, and the reason they aren't named
is because they are children. The children interviewed by the
FBI had pretty consistent accounts. Once there was a federal
agent in their living room telling their mom about the
Albanian Nazi they'd been chatting with on roadblocks. Okay, not
exactly roadblocks, that's a little hyperbolic, but the raids were

(05:50):
coordinated on a platform called Gilded, which is kind of
like Discord and is owned by the same company as Roadblocks,
so it's mostly used by gamers to talk about gaming,
but also apparently for doing federal crimes. But the kids
all said the group's leaders were users named Encino that's
I ns E E n O, not in Sino like

(06:11):
Encino Man the poly Shore movie and Sapper. Many of
the kids correctly ascertained that Encino, the user FEDS have
identified as Alhachemi, was older than they were and European,
but spoke English very well. I went back and pulled
the public access TV recordings of some of those meetings
and listened to the calls attributed to Alhachemi. And he

(06:31):
really doesn't have an accent that I could hear. You know,
you don't got a handed to him or anything. But
he does say the N word like a red blooded
American racist, so I guess he had some practice. The kid,
interviewed by the Metropolitan Police Service at his parents' house
in London, said that Sapper was a college student in
the United Arab Emirates, although in the footnotes the FBI
agent indicates that actually Sapper is in Jordan, but you know,

(06:54):
close enough for a teenager. I can't find any information
about whether or not charges are being pursued against that user,
either in the US or in Jordan. He isn't identified
by name at all, but he does appear to be
the only other adult discussed in that document. The English
teenager said Sapper loves spamming the calls they raid with
Isis Gore videos. The criminal complaint details seven incidents of

(07:17):
zoom raids in June and July of twenty twenty five,
of which were meetings of the Presno City Council, one
was a Jewish religious service conducted by Zoom in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, and the other with some random couple's wedding
in upstate New York. But the incidents described in detail
in the complaint are clearly not the only ones that happened,
just the only ones being charged at this time. When

(07:39):
FBI agents interviewed a thirteen year old boy in Oregon,
he told them the group's leader also enjoyed Zoom bombing
parent teacher conferences, specifically at schools that had had past
active shooter events. The boy said, Encino again, that's al HACHEMI,
according to the complaint, loves to offend people and talks
about racist things more than anyone else. Yes, but you

(08:01):
know who doesn't love to offend people. The sponsors of
this show and we are back. I hope you enjoyed
those products and services. Hopefully none of them were four
online chat platforms where European neo Nazis are recruiting your kids.

(08:21):
All right, So all these criminal charges here are related
to conduct that occurred in the span of less than
five weeks four full years ago, but for as long
as it took to actually indict Alhacemi. It looks like
the FEDS acted pretty quickly after the first few threats
were made. They were sitting at the dining room table
talking to a kid identified as RB by August twenty seventh,

(08:43):
barely two months after the call started. RB is described
as a juvenile with a history of making threats who
lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Obviously, it's impossible to identify
this minor, and probably not a good idea to do
even if I could, but I am dying to know
what exact that history of threats looks like. I found
a couple of news stories in the year or two

(09:04):
before this about teens in the Spartanburg area who'd been
arrested for making threats. Now. Obviously, again, even in those
news stories, if a miner is arrested, they are identified,
so there's no way to sort of connect these two
unnamed teens. But I did find a story about a
ninth grader who posted a snapchat on the day of
the Parkland school shooting in twenty eighteen. I was a
photo of the teenager holding a realistic fake gun with

(09:27):
the caption round two of Florida Tomorrow again, it's impossible
to say if there's any connection, but the general age, location,
and interest in school shootings definitely caught my eye. Another
member of the group, identified as a miner named CG
in North Caldwell, New Jersey, sometimes used the name Adam
Lanza during the zoom raids, an homage to the Sandy

(09:49):
Hook school shooter, and when the FBI was chatting with
RB on August twenty seventh, he told him about another
user in the discord who posted often about his desire
to carry out a school shooting and wanting to kill
a few days after that, the FBI agents were sitting
down with that thirteen year old boy and his parents
in Oregon. That boy, identified as PM, told the agents

(10:11):
that Encino wasn't just interested in zoom bombing, but the
group also dosed people, naming a bizarre list of targets
ranging from Jewish leaders to yoga teachers and cooking classes.
PM also told the agents that Encino had docked a
former member of the group, a girl identified in a
footnote as l T, after a disagreement over whether or
not they should be using so many racial slurs in

(10:32):
the prank phone calls. Now I know I said it
wasn't possible or even advisable to try to identify these miners,
but it turns out it is possible, and she's not
a miner anymore. I don't know. Maybe the rule is
if you're old enough to drive drunk, you're old enough
to get talked about on a podcast. She's got a
court date coming up for a DUI arrest in April.

(10:54):
The girl identified as LT was docked by the group's
leader in July twenty twenty when she was just sixteen,
and we only have that thirteen year old aspiring school
shooter's word for it as to why she left the group.
Maybe it is possible that she disagreed with the racial
slur heavy call scripts, but I don't think that's because
she's not a huge fan of racism. She shows up

(11:14):
that same year in leaked discord chats from the servers
groyper Haven and Nick Fuentes Unofficial, both servers for fans
of Nick Quente's. She identifies herself as a paleo conservative
Christian monarchist and claims to know Nick Quentz. When another
user asked her if she likes Nick, she says, yeah,

(11:34):
he's cool, but She takes issue with the fact that
he wants to marry a white woman because he is,
in her eyes, not white, and says whites are better
than any other race and we need to stay inside
of our own race. A few sort of vestigial stitches
of videos with her now band TikTok account show her
in a Trump shirt and Maga hat giving the camera

(11:57):
this weird Kubrick stare as the tech next girls that
think communists should be jailed appears over her head. You know,
kids will be kids, right, Just classic kids stuff, wanting
to imprison your political enemies and being really opposed to
race mixing. Well. Last summer, she gave a speech about
cancel culture to the Burkes County Patriots, an anti government

(12:19):
extremist group that sent charter buses to the insurrection, and
public records show she received a stipend as a legislative
intern at the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. The teenage Groper
to Legislative Aid pipeline is something that should concern us
all a little bit more, But doxing LT seems to
have frightened some of the other kids. PM that's thirteen

(12:40):
year old in Oregon told agents he was worried the
group would dox him if he tried to leave BO.
A minor in North Carolina told agents he believed in
Sino had access to his computer by a spyware AM
a seventeen year old in Maryland, provided agents with screenshots
showing in Sino had posted his address and discussed having
him swatted. And this is such what a messy, ugly thing, right, So,

(13:02):
first of all, these are kids. They're kids, right, One
of them is as young as thirteen, and that has
to be front of mind in all of this. But
even if they lack the frontal lobe capacity to really
understand the consequences of saying you're going to kill someone,
this isn't just normal kid acting out behavior, right. PM

(13:23):
told other users he wanted to shoot up his school.
AM posted often about wanting to build bombs and blow
things up and expressed a lot of interest in isis
They were all calling into these meetings and saying the
most shocking, upsetting things they could think of. And it's
not one hundred percent clear why, right, Like they didn't
all necessarily have the same motivations or understandings. A teenager

(13:48):
identified as KH told agents the goal is to create
such a disturbance that the hosts have no choice but
determinate the meeting. Hurting people's feelings along the way is
completely in bounds, and the slurs were just a means
to that end. He said they would quote just have
fun in there. Am told agents he was just posting

(14:09):
quote random things. But he also admitted he hates Jews.
And so maybe it's a meaningless exercise to try to
nail down exactly how ideologically committed these teens were to
this project of racial and religious harassment. But Ala Sheemi
is also not the first Nazi to see the value
in recruiting teens online. They may just be kids talking

(14:31):
shit right now, but if you hear a kid talking
this type of shit, don't brush it off right This
starts somewhere. This edgy, shocking, unseerious sort of four chan
style racism crystallizes into serious ideological commitment for some of them.
And I hope these kids' parents were able to provide
some meaningful intervention after they found out what their kids

(14:51):
were up to online. And back to that timeline, right, So,
the indictment only lists the June twenty twenty calls as
the overt acts of the conspiracy, but the date range
for the charge conduct is actually May twenty twenty to
February twenty twenty two, and maybe that means they plan
to introduce additional evidence of other calls to support the
conspiracy claim. It's hard to say. They're being pretty tight

(15:14):
lipped about it. Reporting by Jason Koebler for four or
four Media says the Department of Justice declined to comment
on the possibility of anyone else being charged, and the
criminal complaint goes into some detail by interviewing multiple cooperative miners,
but it is possible the records they got back from
these various platforms led them to other co conspirators who
are old enough to catch a federal charge. There are

(15:35):
a lot of details missing here that will just have
to wait for. The docket shows that Ali Shehemi has
retained an attorney. I assume they wouldn't have unsealed the
indictment if they didn't have him in custody, But there's
no information available at when or where he was arrested
and how that extradition is coming along. And it's interesting
to me how incredibly similar the MO is in this
case to the ring led by the Goham Defense League, guys.

(15:57):
I mean, it's not exactly a complicated play. It's not
hard to believe that racists who never met each other
would independently arrive at the same gross way of bothering people.
But take, for example, one of the incidents in the indictment.
A man that they alleged was Alhahemi called into the
Fresno City Council meeting on June eleventh, twenty twenty, during
public comment. He pretended to be a local resident named Brian,

(16:18):
and he started off pretty normal, saying, you know, I
agree with the previous speaker. He's sort of indicating that
he's interested in and engaged in the topic of the meeting.
He expresses an opinion about the topic at hand, which
happened to be police funding, and then suddenly he pivots
to a violent call for murder of black residence and
repeatedly uses the N word. And so after that call ends,

(16:39):
the council's on high alert for disruptive callers, so subsequent
members of the group don't bother with a script or
a backstory. They just start shouting slurs the second they
connect until they're booted from the call. Right, So in
this case, the caller after fake Brian was that miner
from South Carolina, and when his call connects you can
hear him laughing and he just says the N word
and they hang up on him. I don't know, maybe

(17:00):
I'm too hung up on the structural similarities here. I
guess that's just classic crank call procedure, right. You start
off with the reasonable ruse, You get the person you've
called to believe this is a real normal phone call,
and then you shock and upset them by making a
hard right turn into the I guess you can't really
call it a punchline if it's not funny, but you
know what I mean. But if you took the names
out of this indictment, you could mistake these descriptions of

(17:21):
calls for city council death squad scripts. But they didn't
start doing their zoom bombing until the summer of twenty
twenty three, And according to this indictment, the FBI agents
were having uncomfortable conversations with teenage boys all the way
back in twenty twenty So I think if there was
any overlap between these two zoom bomb rings, we'd know
by now. I think this is just unrelated racists reaching

(17:42):
the same horrible conclusion. But if those guys are listening,
I hope they hear the significance of that timeline. Within
weeks of that first zoom bomb. In this indictment, they
had search warrants for the homes of two of the
miners on those calls. I think a lot of people
assume that if they don't get caught, they aren't going
to get caught. You see that a lot in tax

(18:02):
evasion cases. Right after you do it a few years
in a row, you figure they're never going to get you,
so you keep doing it. You get a little bolder.
But they're just taking their time and building their case.
Just because you haven't been caught yet, does it mean
they don't know you're doing it? So who knows. Maybe
we'll see a similar indictment against the GDL guys a
few years after they started doing it. There's not really

(18:24):
a button to put on this one. We'll have to
wait for more filings in al Hashemi's case to learn
anything more there. But if you know any teenagers, check
in with them, make sure they're actually playing roadblocks and
not being coaxed into doing federal crime by a Nazi
in Albania. You know what better yet, go outside, unplug
your router, be free. It could happen here as a

(18:47):
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