Lights Out

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
In April of twenty twenty, we were all talking about
what we were going to buy with our twelve hundred
dollars COVID stimulus check. I vaguely recall making the decision
to go ahead and bite the bullet and buy a toaster.
No more preheating the whole oven, just a toast of
little bread in my house. Life's too short not to
enjoy a crisp pot sandwich from time to time, and
starting to feel like life might be even shorter. It

(00:29):
was a fraud time. We all coped differently, but about
three hundred miles south of where I was obsessively reading
reviews for small appliances, an unnamed witness was chatting with
an acquaintance at Camp La June. He was thinking about
using his check to buy a handgun at a nearby
store in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and he was far from
the only one with this idea. The FBI reported a

(00:52):
twenty percent increase in gun sales over the previous year
during those early months of the pandemic. I guess when
Americans get scared, they turn to guns, even when that
doesn't really make any sense. But everybody wanted a gun
even beyond the average American lust for guns. So lines
were long, and prices were high, and paperwork was backlocked.

(01:13):
The acquaintance our unnamed witness was talking to about the purchase.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Said, oh, no, you don't want to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
I can get you a great deal in a Glocken
nineteen with no serial number for just fifteen hundred dollars.
You'll even get a silencer. Before discussing the details of
the deal, Liam Collins placed his phone inside of the microwave.
For those of you who only have normal friends and
have never been asked to put your cell phone in
the microwave, the idea is that the appliance acts as

(01:38):
a Faraday cage, preventing the device from transmitting a signal
of any kind, so it can't be used to monitor
a conversation you don't want the government to know about.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
I'm not sure this technique is terribly worthwhile.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
I mean, the government can get a warrant to track
your phone to WI or tap your phone, but I've
never read a case where a warrant was obtained to
use someone's cell phone as a passive listening device. I'm
sure it's possible, I just don't know how likely it
is that the government is using your phone this way,
but it's a common enough idea in certain circles. And

(02:11):
with the spone safely stowed in the microwave, William Collins
started cooking something a little hotter than ramen. We opened
the door to the investigation that revealed a neo Nazi
terror plot to kick off a race war. I'm Molly Conger,
and this is a weird blue guys. I usually start

(02:45):
the process of sorting out a story by making a timeline.
Chronological order isn't always the best way to tell a story,
but it's the best way I found to understand how
the pieces fit together so I can try to make
sense of it for us. I lay out every scrap
of information I can find in the court record and
existing reporting by other journalists, and all the odds and
ends I can scrape together from the vast corners of

(03:05):
the Internet. After I published a piece last year about
a different weird little guy, he actually reached out to
a journalist I know who had an existing source relationship
with him and asked.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
How did she know that thing about my grandmother? Well,
it's my job to know.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
I spent an entire day finding county court records for
everyone you've ever met, and read a few dozen issues
of your hometown newspaper from the early nineties. I'm kind
of a weird little guy too, I guess, and I
can get a little carried away. I mean, I'm deeply
committed to placing everything in its proper context, but sometimes
I've got four generations of a guy's family tree mapped out.
I'm looking at his cousin's wedding photos on Instagram, and

(03:42):
I've got a copy of his grandparents marriage license saved
to my desktop, and I realize I've lost the plot
a little. In this case really complicated my process. With
five defendants, three superseding indictments, and four years in court,
it's hard to find a single beginning for the timeline.
So than digging myself into a hole I can't get

(04:02):
back out of, let's just start in twenty fifteen, Shortly
before these five men's lives began to intertwine. In twenty fifteen,
Liam Jan Montgomery Collins, Justin Wade Hermansen, and Joseph Marino
were all still in high school. Marino would soon have
a chance encounter with a National Guard recruiter in his

(04:22):
high school cafeteria. Collins was doing a little modeling, walking
in a New York Fashion Week show for the Japanese
designer North Hooleywood. The summer before his junior year, Marine
Lance Corporal Jordan Duncan was living in Latvia studying Russian
at the Defense Language Institute's Foreign Language Center, and Paul
James Kreischuk Junior, not to be confused with his father,

(04:43):
Paul Senior, a retired Suffolk County police officer, started more
than fifty pornographic films that year, mostly in a genre
called facial abuse, despite telling an industry publication the year
before that he was getting out of the business, calling
the work he did in facial abuse the most degrading
job he'd ever done. Now, I'm not here to judge

(05:04):
anybody's private life. I mean, beyond the premise of the show,
I guess, which is kind of me passing some judgement of.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
These guys' lives.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
But as far as consensual adult film work, as long
as everyone's safe and doing work they've chosen to do,
that's not my business. That's not what we're here to
figure out. But personally, I'm not very knowledgeable about pornography.
I fear I may be outing myself as kind of
apprude here, but I wanted to figure out if this
was actually as gross as it sounds, or if it

(05:32):
just seemed gross to me because it's not my cup
of tea. So I had to do some research here
that I really wish I had not. I read a
few industry blogs, some forums for both performers and consumers,
some interviews with performers who worked in the genre and
with this particular studio.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
And some legal documents.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
According to a definition used by the examining attorney in
an official decision by the US Trademark and Patent Office
denying a trademark application, the term facial abuse is the
act of sexually humiliating your partner by abusing and degrading
her face during rough oral sex, by holding her head
deep on your genitalia, slapping her face, and talking to

(06:13):
her in a degrading manner during the process. And that's
the nicest way to describe what I saw. The company
seeking that trademark. D and D Media is listed as
the production company behind one hundred and ninety two of
the three hundred and eighty five credits listed on the
Internet Adult Film Database profile for Polly Harker, the alias Kraishak,

(06:35):
performed under for thirteen years. I regret every second I
spent finding out more about this. I know, I said
I'd like to know everything about a guy before I
start writing, but I don't actually need to see him naked,
and I really didn't expect to see him pour a
dog bowl full of a woman's own vomit over her face.

(06:56):
This is, unfortunately not the first time my research has
led me to see aspiring terrorist's penis, but it is,
without a doubt, the worst. Again, I don't want to
put my own moral judgment on this aspect of things.
I'm not saying that a guy with a kink that
makes my stomach hurt is necessarily evil. So I really

(07:16):
did some extra digging here, and I found several women
who had done work with dn E Media and with
Paul Kreischuk specifically. I had really hoped. As I was
gritting my teeth through the videos, I found that the
women were just phenomenal actors that they were putting on
a convincing show of being terrified of being unable to breathe.
I understand there's a market for that kind of thing.

(07:39):
I hoped that they'd all agreed ahead of time that
she would only be pretending to sob and what looked
like her desperately trying to get the man to stop
was only scripted drama. And maybe that's the case for
some of the videos, but several women have come forward
over the years to say that was not their experience
with D and D media. In twenty eleven, DNE released

(07:59):
a facial abuse scene between Kreischuk and a woman performing
under the name Clara Bo on the form Adult DVD Talk.
Even fans of the genre unsettled, with one user writing
they were pretty rough on her, even for fa multiple
and hard slaps to the face, prolonged upside down djays
both over the shoulder and on the couch, and not
one but two body slams. I am sad she even

(08:22):
took it for five minutes, let alone ten. Another user
responded the editing was weird. They must have had to
cut a lot of stuff out so it wouldn't look criminal.
I noticed her eyes were closed for the most part
of the second half. I wonder if he told her
to do that to hide the bloodshot eye. She had
on her blog. Claire herself replied to the thread back

(08:43):
in twenty eleven, posting, to be honest, I don't know
if I can look at it without dredging up the
fucked up feelings it gave me. I'm all for some
rough sex, I was happy with my scene for public disgrace,
and I can't wait for Princess Donna to get back
to the USA so I can get it.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
On bound gang bangs.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
But facial abuse was exactly what they say in the
title abuse with a facial.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
At the end.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
So this isn't just a woman who is regretful about
her time in the industry or someone who showed up
to shoot in a genre she was inexperienced with. She's
shot BDSM and kink content. People are getting hurt for real,
she wrote in twenty eleven. It's not the same as
kink or typical BDSM. In twenty twenty three, she spoke
again about the experience with journalist Paul mulholland. She told

(09:27):
moholland that there was an agreed upon tap out signal
she needed to stop for any reason, but when she
tried to stop the scene, she was ignored. I tapped
his thighs because I couldn't breathe anymore, and he didn't care.
He actually grabbed the back of my head and pulled
me closer, and I had to from kneeling push on
his thighs, get my feet underneath me, and literally launched
my entire body weight backward to get off of him.

(09:50):
They didn't cut this from the video. Paul Kryshut, covered
in distinctive tattoos, can be seen ignoring BOE's attempt to
end the scene as the blood vessels in her eyes burst.
A woman who performs as Felicity Feeline says the videos
she did for D and E Media are her greatest
regret of her nine years in the industry, and she's
made several videos about the violent shoots and the subsequent

(10:10):
harassment and coercion from the director, though she doesn't name him.
Both of the credits on her Internet Adult film Database
profile for DNA shoots are videos starring opposite Kraishuk.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
And that's what their goal is. They want to completely
ruin a woman on camera, and they will do anything
in their power legally to do it. Maybe they overstep
the legal boundaries at points, but that's to be determined
by someone in law, because I don't want to go there.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
In other videos, I sincerely regret watching Kraishuk chokes and
slaps a black performer for rating her and calling her
racial slurs as she sobs if her experience was anything
like Clara's or Felicity's or any of the other women
who've come forward about this company not acting. So that's
who pol was before all of this starts. His last

(11:06):
pornographic film was released in twenty eighteen, so it seems
likely he stopped shooting porn in twenty seventeen, which is
about when he made the career switch to illegally manufacturing
firearms for guys. He met on a Nazi message board
in twenty sixteen, when Liam Collins was a senior at
New Providence High School in a northern New Jersey suburb.
He started posting on Iron March.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
The forum first.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Appeared online in twenty eleven, launched by a Russian nationalist
named Alisher Mukitnadoff, and in its six years online it
was an incubator for neo Nazi ideology around the world.
Fascist organizations like National Action in the UK, Adam Waffin,
and the us Skidas in Lithuania and Antipodian Resistance in
Australia were born on the forum. These and other organizations

(11:50):
grew and networked, recruiting online posters into real life terror cells.
The site disappeared without explanation one day in November twenty seventeen.
The webmaster for The Daily Stormer at the time, Andrew Ahenheimer,
perhaps better known as Weave, speculated that there was international
pressure to take the site offline after an incident in
Florida earlier that year, Adam Woffin founder Brandon Russell was

(12:13):
arrested when police found a stash of explosives and bomb
making supplies in his garage. The police were only in
his garage because his roommate fellow Adam Woffin member Devin
Arthur's and Iron March user, the vice of WULFA, told
investigators that Russell planned to target infrastructure and synagogues, and
Arthur's was only talking to the police because he'd been

(12:33):
arrested for murdering their other two roommates, Andrew Onischuk and
Jeremy Himmelman, in the apartment the four shared. Now obviously
the double murder and the bombing plot are the bigger
deal here. But do you just want to point out
that Devon should have put a little more effort into
the screening. These guys love costplaying the whole Hitler vibe,
using German words in their handles. But if he's one

(12:54):
white wolf, it'd be der weis a wolf. If he's
multiple white wolf wolves, it's device in Vilfa. The vice
of Volfa isn't anything. I guess it doesn't matter because
it'll be twenty five years to life before he logs
back on. Other former posters on the Terrorism Training for
Him believed the Russian government pressured Mukitnadov to take the

(13:16):
site offline because users were recruiting and raising money for
the Ukrainian Nu Nazi paramilitary group Azov Battalion, which is
considered a terrorist organization by the Russian government. A twenty
twenty investigation by the Russian language office of PHOEBC News.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
Doesn't really support that theory.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Mkitnadov was still living in Moscow and was never charged
by the Russian government, something they would presumably do if
they felt he was to blame for funding Asov. Both
Mukitnadov and a spokesperson for Azov declined to speak with
reporters from the BBC, so, despite speculation from his fans
that he'd been murdered by Russian intelligence agents, he was
alive enough in twenty twenty to hang up on a reporter.

(13:57):
But before the site disappeared, it was a place for
lonely Nazis to connect and in September of twenty sixteen,
when Liam Collins was starting his senior year of high school,
he was already recruiting members for a group project, as
he called it, as Niez Gooda. He exchanged messages with
a user named Panzerlier, a twenty three year old just
finishing up a three year stint in the US Army.

(14:20):
Colins said he was forming a group that would eventually
become a paramilitary organization. He planned to join the Marines
after high school to get the training he would need
to lead the group, and was looking to recruit members
with military and policing experience.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
I guess Panserliter.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Passed the teens Vibe check because he became a member
of the Fledgling group. A few years later, when he
was outed as an Iron March poster and lost his
job at the Lafayette, Indiana Police Department. Joseph Zacharrek would
cooperate with federal investigators and testify before the grand jury
then indicted Collins. The core group really came together when Collins,
as Niezgoda, started corresponding with Paul Kreischach, who was posting

(14:56):
on Iron March as visions from Patmos. In early twenty seventeen, Collins,
still a high school senior, recruited the adult film actor.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
To the crew.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
Just a few months later, the growing group took a
camping trip together, finally getting offline and meeting in real
life to discuss their plans for the future. By August,
Collins had joined the Marine Corps and moved down to
Camp Lea. June, on Iron March, he posted that he
had a tight knit crew of x mill and security
that he was training with, going on hikes and doing
live fire exercises. Collins posted that he couldn't really get

(15:27):
into specifics online, writing that it's an inner circle thing,
but it will serve its purpose when the time comes.
Think of it as a modern day ss Kryshuck laid
out his theory of operations in a post on Iron
March in early twenty seventeen.

Speaker 4 (15:44):
First order of business is knocking down the system, mounting
it and smashing its face until it has been beaten
past the point of death. Eventually we will have to
bring the rifles out and go to work. We will
have to hit the streets and strike as many blows
to the remaining power structure as we can. Keep it
on the ropes, forget the ponds, and go for the knights, kings,

(16:04):
and queens. Second order of business is the seizing of
territory and the Balkanization of North America. Buying property in
remote areas that are already predominantly white and right leaning,
networking with locals, training, farming, and stockpiling. Essentially, we are
laying the framework for a guerrilla organization and a takeover
of local government and industry. Start buying property now in

(16:27):
the types of regions mentioned above, and get to work
on building your own group. As time goes on in
this conflict, we will expand our territories and slowly take
back the land that is rightfully ours. As we build
our forces in our numbers, we will move into the
urban areas and clear them out. This will be a
ground we're very reminiscent of Iraq, as we will essentially

(16:48):
be facing an insurgent force made up of criminals and
gang members.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
And he meant it.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
You don't have to give these guys credit for anything,
but you can't say he didn't mean it. A lot
of guys talk like this online, but they don't all
start an illegal amateur gunsmithing operation and move to Idaho.
It's not entirely clear when Paul Kreischuk started making his
own guns. The earliest payment listed across the slew of
indictments as a transfer from one of his co conspirators,

(17:17):
Joseph Marino, to Paul Kreischuk, in September of twenty eighteen.
The documents don't clearly spell out what that payment was for,
but all the other money transfers discussed in the indictments
are linked to shipments of firearms or their components. Kreishak
had recruited Marino to join the group earlier that year.
In February of twenty eighteen, according to testimony from John Little,

(17:37):
the investigator from the Naval Criminal Investigative Services assigned to
this case, Marino had attempted to join Identity Europa, a
now defunct white supremacist organization earlier that year, so he
was clearly shopping around for the right fit, just looking
for the right Nazi group for his interests. Little's testimony
doesn't elaborate on this at all, but I did go
on a bit of a fishing trip to see what

(17:59):
I could find about this my own. He didn't find
anything terribly satisfying, but he did find a single message.
In the discord leaks published by Unicorn Riot in February
of twenty eighteen, a user posted in the identity Europa
Discord's new member chat, Hey I'm Joseph from New Jersey.
My interviewer was aj But a YouTube channel with the

(18:19):
same username has playlists that includes several videos of cops
getting shot, a genre of video mentioned in the court records.
Apparently the crew liked to watch things like this as
part of their training, preparing to fight police to the
death if the time came, and critiquing the way the
officers reacted to getting shot, saying things like a true
warrior wouldn't show pain. That YouTube account also added a

(18:41):
video to a playlist about how National Guardsmen can prepare
for overseas deployment at around the same time that Marino's
National Guard unit did deploy to Cutter in twenty nineteen.
So I can't tell you with ironclad certainty that the
discord post I found is the one the investigator was
talking about, but it seems like a pretty solid fit.
And I guess Identity EUROPEO wasn't a good fit because

(19:01):
he never posted there again. But back to the guns,
because that's where all of this started. In April of

(19:22):
twenty twenty, investigators with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service NCIS
sat down with that confidential witness, the guy who wanted
to use his COVID bucks to buy a glock. When
Liam Collins tried to persuade him to purchase the weapon
from him instead of going to a store in town,
Collins showed the potential customer videos of the kinds of
equipment he could get. The video showed a man with

(19:44):
very distinctive tattoos firing a pistol with a homemade silencer.
John Little, the NCIS agent, later testified that they wanted
to find photos of Kryshuk that would show that part
of his arm to determine if Kraishuk was the man
in the video. Obviously they had his driver's license photo,
but you can't see his tattoos in any of the
photos the government already had.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
So he set off to do a little.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Open source research online and what he found was Paully Harker.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
So this NCIS.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Agent absolutely watched some of the same pornographic videos I
had to watch while researching this, and you can probably
guess that you can definitely see the tattoos in the video.
And given that this initial interview was with NCIS, not
the FBI, we can guess that this confidential witness was
likely a fellow marine, So credit where credit is due,

(20:32):
I guess at least one marine in this story was
offered the chance to do crimes of the Nazi and said,
I think I got to talk to somebody about this
instead of sign me up. And the NCIS investigators were
probably very pleased to hear their new cooperating witness say
the name Liam Collins. Just a few months earlier, they'd
tried to talk to Collins himself about something else. When

(20:54):
the contents of the defunct Iron March forum were leaked
online in late twenty nineteen, Collins was quickly identified in
the data Newsweek published an article on November eighth, twenty nineteen,
identifying Collins as an active duty marine whose Iron March
posts were riddled with slurs and plans to create his
own paramilitary force. When NCIS investigators attempted to interview him

(21:15):
about the allegations in the article, he asked for an
attorney and declined to comment. There's no information available about
what follow up occurred internally between that November interview and
this confidential witness coming forward in April, but I really
want to believe that they were developing their own investigation
into Collins during that time before this gift fell into

(21:36):
an elapse. Instead of arresting Collins immediately for trying to
sell an illegal silencer to this witness, they set up
a meeting. They needed their cooperating witness to actually buy
the gun. Offering to sell it to him wasn't enough.
They needed him on record making the transaction, and so

(21:56):
on April twenty fourth, twenty twenty, the cooperating witness transferred
fifty teen hundred dollars provided to him by the government
to Collins for the pistol and the silencer. Collins told
the buyer that the money would then be transferred to
someone he had done many similar deals with, someone he's
known for years and trusts completely, even showing the witness
the Venmo account he was sending the money to. The
Venmo account was under the actual name for the man

(22:18):
who would fulfill the order, Paul Kreischuk. An affidavit written
for a search warrant later that summer says investigators were
then able to follow that money. They went into Kreischuk's
personal bank account, and he then used that money to
make several purchases for the materials he'd need to fulfill
the order.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Now, I'm not a gun guy.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
Gun guys are some of the most pedantic little nerds
on the planet, and so I'm going to say this preemptively.
I do not want you to explain gun guy stuff
to me. I did some research, and I consulted a
couple of gun guys I know, and this is correct
enough for us all to make it through the episode.
One of the things Kreishuk purchased with the government's money
from this controlled buy was called a solvent trap. If you,

(23:01):
like me, are not a gun guy, you don't know
what that is. So I was looking online websites where
you can buy solvent traps, and the odd copy on
these websites seems convincing enough. It's a little tube you
can screw onto the end of your gun when you're
cleaning it, and its alleged purpose is to collect the
excess solvent that's used to clean the weapon. So convenient, right,

(23:23):
But as I read through some of these sites, it
felt like I was being lied to. If this is
such a necessary object that everyone needs every time they
clean their gun, why haven't they always existed? Why have
I never heard of this being an issue that every
gun owner is facing every day, big puddles of solvent
every time you clean your gun. And I feel like
I've seen people clean guns inside. If this is something

(23:46):
that makes a large mess with a volatile chemical, surely
you wouldn't do it inside. So I asked some gun guys,
it's not a thing. Nobody uses a solvent trap to
clean a gun. It's a flimsy gus story for an
object that can be easily modified with minimal skill to
create a homemade silencer. And silencers are not completely illegal.

(24:09):
It's very possible to own one legally, but you have
to do some paperwork and pay some money and wait
a little while, and then of course the government knows
you have it, and they are banned at the state level,
and a handful of states, including New York, New Jersey,
and Rhode Island, three states where we'll see him making
or shipping them to. So based on the information they

(24:31):
got from this controlled buy with their cooperating witness, they
now know that Liam Collins is selling guns and silencers
in North Carolina. He's sending that money to Paul Kreyschuk
and Idaho, and then Kryshuck is doing a little amateur gunsmithing,
and then he's putting these guns in the mail. And
now this isn't arts and crafts between friends or small
business entrepreneurship. That's gun trafficking. And they already know Collins

(24:54):
was active on Iron March. They've tried asking him about it,
and the investigation quickly leads them to kreischuk'sccount and the
Iron March data too, and then to the conversations that
Collins and Kreishach had been having together about creating a
modern dass about buying land to the Pacific Northwest, about
recruiting people with military backgrounds for a coming domestic conflict

(25:16):
about arming themselves. Kishak had recently moved from New York
to Idaho, and he's making guns. This plan is already
in motion. Based on the package they could confirm was
the result of their controlled buy, investigators discovered that Kreischuk
was using a fake driver's license with the name Sean
Corkoran to rent a private mailbox in Idaho, and their

(25:37):
cooperating witness was far from the only person receiving packages
from this Shan Corkoran. Financial records for Collins and Kreishuk
showed numerous similar transactions involving the pair with apparent buyers,
many of whom were identifiable as other Iron March posters
or other active duty Marines. Investigators obtained warrants to intercept

(25:58):
a trio of packages from that adres in Idaho and
addressed to another marine in Collins's unit. Inside they found
a pistol with no serial number and a silencer with
the parts distributed across the three boxes. I guess so
it would be less suspicious, I don't know. A few
days later there was another trio of packages with the
same contents. Both times, investigators opened the packages, documented their contents,

(26:23):
packed them back up and.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Put them back in the mail. So just because you
haven't been caught doesn't mean you're not caught. Right.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
You see this in a lot of investigations where they
know exactly what you're doing, and they're watching you do it,
and they're letting you do it enough times to get
yourself in deeper trouble. So don't think that just because
the package with your illegal gun arrived that it's all
good now. So the packages go back in the mail,
and then they waited outside the post.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
Office to see who picked them up.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
Physical surveillance showed Justin Hermannson, a marine in Collins unit,
and another member of this Nazi paramilitary pick up one
set of those packages. A few days later, when NCIS
conducted another controlled meat with their cooperating witness, it was
Hermanson who arrived to hand over the gun to the buyer.
So they're kind of dead to rights here on the
firearm trafficking. Collins and Kraaishak, and to a lesser degree Hermanson,

(27:20):
have all participated in this scheme to make ship and
sell these guns and silencers. But now it's becoming clear
that there's something else going on here. In July Liam
Collins bought a plane ticket to fly to Boise. Joseph Morino,
that National guardsman in New Jersey who had made his
own transfers directly to Kaishak the year before, bought a

(27:40):
plane ticket too, and Jordan Duncan, a former Marine who
had also made several transfers to Kaishak corresponding with packages
mailed to him and his brother in Texas, was surveilled
driving from San Antonio to Idaho and unloading a large
number of very heavy boxes from his car into Kaishuk's garage.

Speaker 1 (27:58):
What are they doing?

Speaker 2 (28:01):
The investigators got a warrant to track Liam Collins's location
by his cell phone during this trip, but he ultimately
did not go. This was July twenty, twenty lifetime ago.
There were pandemic related restrictions for active duty Marines that
prevented him from traveling, but Joseph Marino, Jordan Duncan, and
Liam Collins's little brother Tate did make the trip. FBI

(28:22):
agents surveiled the group when they met in Boise. Photos
and videos were covered from the men's phones show them
wearing the skull print half face mask closely associated with
Adam Woffen. At the time shooting their guns and posing
for group photos giving the Nazi salute. During that visit,
they conducted several live fire training exercises out in the
middle of nowhere. In August of twenty twenty, investigators installed

(28:45):
a pole camera outside the post office near Camp La June,
where Collins and Hermanson were picking up these packages. They
considered installing a pole camera outside Joseph Marino's home in
New Jersey, probably to document the deliveries of stolen military
equipment that Collins was having dropped off by a third party,
but the lighting was no good and the camera never
went up. They conducted another controlled by with their cooperating witness,

(29:08):
this time having the witness purchase a short barreled rifle
and another silencer and confirming the details of the purchase
over FaceTime with Collins. They got another warrant to track
Liam Collins using his cell phone, and they got warrants
for the iCloud accounts belonging to Paul Kreischuk, Jordan Duncan,
Justin Hermanson, Liam Collins, and Tate Collins. Joseph Marino was
sparing that particular intrusion. The affidavit notes that he was

(29:29):
a Samsung user, so he did not have an iCloud account,
And now, unbeknownst to them, they are on a collision
course with a federal indictment, and at the same time,
they're ready to move past just mailing each other guns.
They're ready to move on to the next phase. In August,
Jordan Duncan and Paul Kreischuk were chatting about Duncan's upcoming

(29:50):
move to Boise. Kraischuk tells Duncan to go ahead and
follow BLM Boise on Instagram because he's been getting a
lot of really good intelligence from their posts, and Duncan writes,
I'm like four weeks away from being there. Fam been
thinking a lot more about stuff you and I need
to be doing, and Kaishuk tells him playtime is over,
writing he is looking forward to you getting out here

(30:13):
so we can get shit done.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Duncan replies, Yeah, I feel you.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
The closer I get to it, the more I think
about everything we have to do, and brother, we are
going to have to move some mountains. In September twenty twenty,

(30:39):
Jordan Duncan takes a pretty serious pay cut to take
a job up in Idaho and moves up to Boise
to be near Kraishuk. Liam Collins is discharged from the
Marines and sets off on a road trip that includes
a stop in New Jersey to speak with Joseph Marino
in person. In October, Justin Hermanson recruits another marine to
the group. Collins instructs this new member to buy a
bunch of ten right and explosive that can be ignited

(31:02):
by shooting at it. Paul Kreischuk was preparing to take
the entrance exam to become a firefighter in Boise, and
Liam Collins moves to Idaho, moving in with Jordan Duncan
and Boise. On October sixteenth, twenty twenty, Joseph Zakerk, that
police officer in Indiana is publicly identified in the Iron
Marsh Leaks. He is immediately fired and so just days

(31:26):
before Jordan Duncan, Liam Collins, and Paul Kreischuk are arrested.
They don't know they're about to be arrested. They're all
in the group chat urging Zacharic to just move out
to Boise to be with them. You know you've lost
your job, you don't have anything else to do right now.
Just come on out here with us. But after being
publicly outed and losing his job, Zachark just wants out altogether.

(31:48):
It's just not worth it anymore, and he later tells
federal agents that he's very worried the group will think
that he talked to the cops, which is I guess
kind of a silly thing to worry about, because he
was a cop until the day before this, But I
guess he means other cops and about this. So the
more they insist that you have to come out here.

(32:09):
You're not allowed to leave the group, you have to
come out here to be with us, the more scared
he gets that they only want him to come out
to Boise so they can kill him. And that's the
week the first indictment came down, and it's only for
Liam Collins and Paul Kreishak, and they're only charged with
the gun trafficking. The Feds pick up Jordan Duncan the
same day, charging him with conspiracy.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
He was arrested as.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
He walked across the parking lot on his way into
work that morning. A dozen agents through flash bangs before
rushing him, and on the day of that arrest, all
the Feds know for sure is that these guys are
making and mailing guns, and that they have these extremist views.
It's not illegal to have those extremist views. You can't
arrest them for having those views. But if you know

(32:53):
they're trafficking those guns to members of their Nazi paramilitary group,
there are going to be some follow up quests that
aren't about the National Firearms Act. And right around the
time of these first arrests, investigators interview Maxwell Womack, the
most recent recruit to the organization, the one who bought
all that tannerite. Justin Hermanson had recruited this fellow marine

(33:15):
just weeks before the indictment. He's only mentioned by name
a few times. It looks like he came into things
right there at the end and hadn't necessarily broken the
law yet and was very cooperative during the investigation. And
they also interviewed Joseph Zacherik, the cop with Cold Feet.
He too was cooperative and was never charged in connection
with the group's activities. And both of these men tell

(33:36):
investigators in October of twenty twenty that their former friends
had talked a lot about attacking the power grid. They
were obsessed with the Metcalf sniper attacked as still unsolved
incident in twenty thirteen, where a small team of gunmen
damaged seventeen transformers at the Metcalf transmission substation outside of
San Jose, California. The attack failed to actually take out

(33:59):
power to the area, but it did cost fifteen million
dollars in damage. And it's a source of great fascination
for a certain kind of guy, a guy who wants
to turn out the lights. It's sort of proof of
concept that you can take out a substation with just
a rifle. And when they arrested Paul Kreischak, they found
a piece of paper in his wallet. On one side

(34:20):
there was a handwritten list of intersections. Each intersection corresponded
to the location of a piece of critical infrastructure for
the power grid in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and California. And
on the other side there were a dozen names. The
people on the list were mostly local and state politicians.
It included the governor of Oregon and a California state

(34:41):
representative who happens to be both gay and Jewish. Alicia Garza,
a co founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, posted
a tweet that week that the FBI had visited her
home to inform her that her name was on the list.
Investigative journalist Jim Laporta has also posted that he received
a similar visit in late twenty twenty. Physical surveillance conducted
prior to these first arrests, along with the information they

(35:03):
got back from the warrant for the iCloud accounts, did
provide investigators with some idea that the group was considering
using those guns they were making. Investigators noted that their
observation of the recordings of the live fire drill the
group got together for in July showed offensive tactics, so
they're not just out there target shooting. They were drilling

(35:24):
in the kinds of paramilitary tactics you would use to
carry out an offensive attack. Liam Collins's younger brother, still
in high school at the time, recorded a video of
Black Lives Matter rally from a high vantage point. He
sent the group a photo he took while surveilling the rally,
superimposing a swastika over the picture and captioning it if
only they knew. In late July, Paul Kreischuk was seen

(35:46):
sitting in his car observing a Black Lives Matter rally
at Boise State University, then slowly circling it several times
before driving off. A month later, he was seen again
sitting in his car across the street from a park
in Boys where a rally was being held. Activists and
Idaho were understandably outraged when they found out that the
FBI had simply watched this man as he watched them,

(36:10):
knowing he was considering opening fire on them. It seems
the full extent of the plan was only really uncovered
after the arrests in October. With the first three members
of the cell and custody, they now had full access
to the men's phones and computers. In early October, Duncan
and Kryshuk discussed shooting members of the local Black Lives
Matter chapter. Videos were also found on Joseph Marino's phone

(36:32):
indicating that he had been surveilling Black Lives Matter rallies
in his area that summer too. In one conversation that summer,
the height of the uprising after George Floyd's murder, Paul
Kryschuk texted the group a photo of a BLM flyer
he'd torn down in Boise. He said they should come
up with something else. To put up in its place.
Joseph Morino replied, the lights will turn off, and so

(36:54):
will you. It's a bit of a clunky slogan. I
might have workshopped that a little bit. I was in
charge of propaganda for the Nazi terror cell, but it
describes the group's ultimate plan. They hoped to do something
like the Metcalf sniper attack, and then, under cover of darkness,
with emergency responders tied up with car accidents and medical
emergencies that would ensue during a blackout, they would carry

(37:16):
out a series of targeted assassinations. Searches of Kaishak's devices
indicated he had already compiled information about the whereabouts of
many of the names on his list. The group had
discussed the most efficient ways of killing their targets, working
out the logistics of placing car bombs. As Kraischuk wrote
to other members of the group, the final frontier is
real life violence. Liam Collins had been stealing military gear

(37:41):
from Camp Lajune for years, so when the time came,
they'd be outfitted in military grade body armour. It wasn't
until August of twenty twenty one that the Department of
Justice actually filed a charge against the men for this
particular element of the plot. The first indictment in October
twenty twenty charged Kaishak and Collins with a firearm trafficking.
Duncan was arrested at the same time in charge with

(38:02):
a conspiracy. The week of those arrests, they tried to
speak with Joseph Marino and he was arrested on state
level charges in New Jersey for having an unseerialized lower
receiver that's the part of the gun that makes it
legally a gun. According to the government, I don't know,
not a gun guy, and they interviewed Justin Hermanson. According
to Joseph Marino's attorney, Herminson was offered an out by

(38:24):
the agents who spoke to him in October. They told him, hey,
you've got a chance to help yourself out here, and
that may have been true. A lot of the men
involved in this plot never got charged. People who made
purchases or picked up a package. Maxwell Womack who bought
the Tannerite, A lot of men who cooperated and weren't
central to the plot did not get charged. And again,

(38:47):
according to Marino's lawyer, Herminson did talk to the agents
at that time specifically about how involved Marino had been
in these crimes. But either Herminson wasn't that helpful or
the agents just didn't realize the time in October the
extent to which he'd been involved in the gun running scheme,
because a month later, in November of twenty twenty, there's
a second indictment, the first superseding indictment. The term superseding

(39:12):
indictment will be familiar to you if you have any
involvement with the courts or if you've just been following
the Trump criminal cases closely, but it just means they
got the grand jury back together to issue a new
indictment in a case based on some new information. It
could involve adding new charges or new defendants, and in
this case we got both. So in this second indictment,

(39:32):
we've got way more details about the specific transactions, the
money transfers and the gun shipments. And now in addition
to Kryshak and Collins, Jordan Duncan and Justin Hermanson are charged.
But we're still just talking about firearm trafficking. And there's
this conspiracy element now making a new allegation that they're
engaged in this conspiracy to traffic these guns for a

(39:52):
criminal purpose, with the intent being to provoke civil disorder.
And here's where we finally get the government talking about
them stalking the blm rallies and talking privately about shooting protesters.
The following year, in June of twenty twenty one, a
second superseding indictment comes down, and now all five of
these men have been charged, Paul Kreischuk, Liam Collins, Justin Hermanson,

(40:14):
Jordan Duncan, and now Joseph Marino. And they've known all
along that Marino went to Boise in July twenty twenty
to participate in the training drill. And they've known all
along that Marino was recruited to the group by Kraishuk
in twenty eighteen, and that he transferred money to Kraishuk
in twenty eighteen.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
It's unclear exactly when.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
They determined that Marino had been as Collins was engaging
in a little bit of his own deal making, selling
guns to people, getting their money and then sending that
money and the order to Kryshuk to fulfill. But that's
what's newly alleged in this second superseding indictment. So now
they're all charged for this conspiracy to manufacture and ship
firearms with the intent to cause civil disorder. And then finally,

(40:55):
in August of twenty twenty one, the third superseding indictment
charges four of them Rreisch, Collins, Marino, and Duncan, but
not Hermitsen, with conspiracy to damage an energy facility.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
And I guess they.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
Should explain a little bit about the idea that taking
out a power grid is a rational first step for
starting a race war. It's maybe not something that makes
perfect intuitive sense to someone who doesn't have a dozen
manifestos about it on.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
Their hard drive.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
FBI, if you were listening, these are research materials. I
actually really hate it when the power goes out, but
it's an incredibly common belief.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
At least in certain circles.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
The general idea for many of them is that a
massive blackout would cause chaos. That's reasonable enough, perhaps, And
most people who think that this is a good idea
are accelerationists, people who believe that society is already unstable,
and instead of trying to fix it or realize their
vision of what it could look like within the current structure,

(41:53):
they believe that the best course of action is to
force it to collapse. You accelerate the destabilization of society,
you push it over the brink and into complete collapse
so you can rebuild it from the rubble. And their
vision of what is to be built from the ashes
is usually pretty bad spoiler alert, A lot of us
are not alive in it. The general idea is actually

(42:17):
predicated on a false assumption that in a blackout, when
resources are restricted and there is confusion and chaos and
we can't get what we need, that will turn on
each other immediately, that we will turn to violence immediately,
that we will riot and steal and kill because we've
been inconvenienced. But a lot of the documentation we have

(42:38):
from real natural disasters shows us evidence to the contrary.
When disaster strikes, we don't turn on each other. Psychologists
and sociologists have terms like catastrophe compassion, and disaster collectivism
to describe the phenomenon, and research shows that this conventional
wisdom that people turn on each other in a crisis
is just not true, at least in the short term.

(43:01):
Disasters actually bring us together. But I suppose if you're
an aspiring neo Nazi terrorist, you don't have the same
understanding of love and human compassion as your neighbors do,
so the plan maybe makes sense to you. Attacks or
attempted ones anyway on electrical infrastructure are alarmingly common in
right wing extremism. In early twenty twenty two, the Department

(43:24):
of Homeland Security shared an intelligence bulletin with law enforcement
agencies and utility operators that there had been a marked
uptick in attacks on electrical infrastructure since twenty twenty, writing
domestic violent extremists have developed credible, specific plans to attack
electricity infrastructure since at least twenty twenty, identifying the electric
grid as a particularly attractive target given its interdependency with

(43:47):
other infrastructure sectors. Several news outlets lengthy uptick and the
resulting bulletins, specifically to a fourteen page zene styled document
circulating on Telegram, a messaging platform favored by extremists, And honestly,
I've got a copy of that one, I know, which
when they're talking about it doesn't really provide any actionable

(44:07):
instructions you couldn't come up with on your own. It
doesn't map out a specific attack. It just sort of
advances the idea that attacks like this are good. It's flashy, though,
I'll give it that. It's got a lot of colors
and fonts. Terrible fonts, really bad use of fonts. Honestly,

(44:27):
one page is just a diagram of the wound patterns
from Sharon Tate's autopsy that does actually make a certain
kind of sense. But I fear we'll have to save
the pen pal relationship between Charles Manson and neo Nazi
James Mason for another episode. But this document, cited by
DHS officials as part of their concern of the rising

(44:47):
threats to the grid, tells the reader to be a
man of action to topple this anti white system through
a variety of means, including attacking the power grid.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
The pamphlet writes, but with.

Speaker 4 (45:01):
The power off, when the lights don't come back on,
all hell will break loose, making conditions desirable for our
race to once again take back what is ours.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
While these attacks can end up costing millions of dollars, and,
according to experts, could theoretically in certain circumstances, trigger catastrophic
cascading grid failures that would take months to repair, they've
never actually cost a race war. In nineteen ninety nine,
three members of the San Joaquin Militia, an anti government
extremist group, plotted to blow up a pair of tanks,

(45:36):
each holding twelve million gallons of propane because they thought
the ensuing chaos would force the government to declare martial law,
which I guess in their minds would inspire more people
to join the militia movement to then fight the government.
So these militia groups are terrified that the government would
declare martial law, and so in order to prove to
people that the government could do that, they're going to

(45:57):
make them do that. I don't know, I don't know
what it's going on in their minds. That same year,
Donald Beauregard, the leader of a militia group called the
Southeastern States Alliance, was arrested for a plan to steal
explosives from National Guard armory to blow up power transmission
stations in Florida. He too, hoped a government crackdown in
response to the disaster would inspire a popular uprising and

(46:18):
subsequent violent revolution. And remember Brandon Russell, the Iron March
poster who founded Adam Offfen when his roommate Devon Arthur's
murdered the other two men they lived with in twenty seventeen.
Arthur's told the police that Russell had plans to take
out critical infrastructure. Tampa police searched the apartment mainly because
there were two dead guys inside from the double murder,

(46:40):
and they found a cooler full of a white cake
like substance that FBI technicians on scene recognized as hexamethylene
triperoxide diamine or HMTD, an explosive compound, and they found
other precursor materials for making explosives and homemade detonators, radioactive materials,
a framed photo of Timothy McVeigh on Russell's dresser, and

(47:03):
assorted neo Nazi propaganda materials.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
The Tampa police spoke to Brandon Russell.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
He told them, yes, I'm a Nazi, Yes I'm a
member of Adam Offfen, but no, no, that cooler full
of HMTD is actually for model rocketry. The Tampa police
let him go, but the FBI immediately contacted the ATF
with the details of the materials they'd found in the apartment,
and the ATF said, yeah, that's that's bombs. You let

(47:31):
the bomb Nazi go, So they immediately issued a federal
warrant for Russell the following day. He ultimately pled guilty
to possessing an unregistered explosive device and was sentenced to
five years. He was out barely a year before he
started conspiring to blow up critical infrastructure in Baltimore, so
he is back in federal prison now well. He allegedly

(47:52):
conspired to take out the power in Baltimore. I guess
he hasn't been tried yet. Christopher Cook and Jonathan Frost
were sentence last for a plot to attack the power
grid in multiple US cities. They too, believed the ensuing
chaos would spark the race war and that society could
be rebuilt by and four white men. And there have
been at least four unsolved attacks on electrical infrastructure in

(48:14):
North Carolina in the last two years, including a November
twenty twenty two incident that left thousands without power in
Jones County, not far from Camp La June. A month later,
in December of twenty twenty two, a woman died as
a result of the power outage in Moore County. Because
her death was a direct result of the attack on
the infrastructure, her death has been ruled a homicide, so

(48:34):
if they ever do charge someone for the attack on
that substation, they'll probably catch that murder charge too. In
February of twenty twenty two, Paul Kreishak pled guilty to
conspiracy to destroy an energy facility. His plea agreement dropped
all the other charges, even though, if you've been able
to follow along this convoluted mess of a story, he's
actually the one who made and mailed all of those guns.

(48:58):
He was sentenced last month to six years and six months.
Justin Hermanson was the next to plead, taking an agreement
in March twenty twenty two, and was sentenced last month
to one year and nine months for conspiracy to manufacture
firearms and ship interstate. Joseph Marino took a plea deal
a month later, in April twenty twenty two, pleading guilty
to the same charge, a single count of conspiracy to

(49:20):
manufacture firearms and ship interstate. Oddly, he doesn't have a
sentencing date that I can find. He's been out on
bond since that August twenty twenty one indictment, and after
he pled guilty, they set a sentencing date for July
twenty twenty three, but it was postponed indefinitely after a
sealed motion was filed. It's possible they needed his cooperation
in the cases against his co defendants, and pending that cooperation,

(49:43):
they postponed sentencing so they could consider that help in
deciding his punishment. I should stop trying to guess why
the Department of Justice times their paperwork the way they do.
It's too hard, usually fruitless, and even if I'm ridal
never know, I just can't help it, I guess. Liam
Collins was the fourth to plead guilty. In October twenty

(50:04):
twenty three, he pled guilty to one count of aiding
and a betting the interstate transportation of unregistered firearms. He
was sentenced last month to ten years. Then finally, in
June twenty twenty four, Jordan Duncan pled guilty to one
count of aiding and a betting the manufacturing of a firearm.
He scheduled to be sentenced in September and could face

(50:24):
up to ten years. You have to wonder about the
charges everyone ended.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
Up pleading to.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
At the end of the day, the guy who made
all of the guns didn't get convicted of a gun crime.
Some of them are guilty of helping make the guns.
Some are just guilty of being part of the process
of getting those guns across state lines. Marino isn't actually
guilty of either, just of being part of a conspiracy
to do it. And nobody's guilty of fantasizing about starting
a race war because I guess technically that's legal, although

(50:53):
not in Virginia. Actually, Section eighteen point two Dash four
eighty five, conspiring to incite one race to insurrection against
another race makes it a class for felony here in
the Commonwealth of Virginia to conspire with another to incite
the population of one race to acts of violence and
war against the population of another race. But I don't
think anybody's ever actually been charged with that. And these

(51:16):
guys were trying to start the race war in Idaho anyway.
They aren't the first weird guys to try to start
the race war from Idaho, and they definitely will not
be the last.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
But today I will.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Leave you with this the best thing I have ever
and probably will ever read. In a federal court transcript
at in August twenty twenty one hearing to determine if
Joseph Marino would be held in pre trial custody, the
prosecutor was trying to present evidence that the defendant was
armed and dangerous. That's her job at that stage, right
to say that this guy is dangerous for these specific

(51:48):
reasons and you shouldn't let him out, and that didn't
have to be so hard given what we know about
the full situation. But she misunderstood something she read in
the chat logs that she'd entered in evidence. Ncis agent
John Little reading from the government's exhibit a chat that
Marino had sent about procuring guns and ammunition for a
trip to West Virginia to shoot guns and hang out

(52:11):
with his extremist pals. So he reads aloud to the court,
Mister Marino states, he's got seven Mac elevens, about eight
thirty eight's and nine nines. It appears to be he's
referring to firearms. These types of firearms were never recovered.
These firearms would have different calibers. It appears they're trying

(52:33):
to figure out what calibers they need to purchase. If
you already know how the sends, I think you're already laughing.
And the judge ruled that day that Marino would be
held without bond, citing his apparent leadership role in the group,
his violent beliefs, the training he'd engaged in in furtherance
of them, the surveillance he'd been conducting of these plm rallies,
and these mysterious missing guns. Shortly after that hearing, the

(52:59):
last supersed the indictment was filed, so Marino was back
in court in front of the same judge, and now
that he'd had a few days to mull it over,
Judge Richard E. Myers interjects, just as the government is
finishing up their questioning of that NCIS agent, he says,
I've got a follow up question about the Biggie Small's lyric,
and the federal Prosecutor's confused the what, And the judge

(53:24):
says again about the Biggie Smalls lyrics, I've got seven
macalleven's about eight thirty eights and nine nines. That's a
Biggie Small lyric. Are we looking for those firearms? The
federal prosecutor remains perplexed. Judge Meyer says the court is
independently aware of the Biggie Small lyrics. He's taking judicial

(53:45):
notice of the lyrics to come on a track on
the nineteen ninety nine album Born Again from the notorious big.
The witness and the federal prosecutor are baffled, like the
judges started speaking a foreign language to them, and so
he says again that list of guns is just Biggie lyrics,
and a prosecutor at a loss says, I am still

(54:08):
not understanding the word. I apologize, and the judge looks
at her and says, Biggie Smalls, Biggie Smalls is a
dead wrapper. So five members of a neo Nazi paramilitary
group are heading off to federal prison for assorted gun crimes.
Nazis everywhere desperately want to shoot holes in electrical transformers.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
No one shot.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
The governor of Oregon and a federal judge in North
Carolina took judicial notice of Biggie Smalls.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
Weird Little Guys. The production of cool Zone Media or
more from pool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
Visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get here.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
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