Three men including ex-Marines sentenced for involvement in plot to destroy power grid

Three men with connections to white supremacist groups were sentenced Thursday in federal court after plotting to destroy a power grid in the northwestern United States, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Paul James Kryscuk, 38; Liam Collins, 25; and Justin Wade Hermanson, 25, were all sentenced for their yearslong involvement in a scheme to strike the power grid as part of a larger, violent extremist plot, according to a Justice Department news release. Two of the men, Collins and Hermanson, were members of the same U.S. Marine unit at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, during the planning, a federal indictment shows.

Collins received the longest sentence of 10 years in prison for aiding and abetting the interstate transportation of unregistered firearms. Kryscuk received a sentence of six and a half years for conspiracy to destroy an energy facility, and Hermanson was sentenced to one year and nine months for conspiracy to manufacture and ship firearms between states.

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“These sentences reflect both the depravity of their plot and the Justice Department’s commitment to holding accountable those who seek to use violence to undermine our democracy,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in the news release.

In 2016, Collins was a frequent poster to a neo-Nazi internet forum and sought recruitment for a paramilitary group he referred to as “a modern day SS,” prosecutors said. He explained on the forum that he joined the Marines “for the cause” and would funnel most of his earnings toward funding the proposed group, the indictment shows.

Collins and Kryscuk, who lived in New York at the time, connected through the forum in 2017, authorities said. As part of his ideology, Kryscuk discussed forming a guerrilla organization armed with rifles to “slowly take back the land that is rightfully ours,” the indictment reads.

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“We will have to hit the streets and strike as many blows to the remaining power structure as we can to keep it on the ropes,” said a message from Kryscuk included in the indictment.

The two recruited more members to their group, including Hermanson, and studied at length a previous power substation attack that was carried out by an unknown group using assault rifles, according to the Justice Department. Between 2017 and 2020, the group began illegally manufacturing and selling firearms, as well as stealing military gear, prosecutors said.

They eventually met in Boise, Idaho, in 2020 — where Kryscuk had moved earlier that year — for a live-fire weapons training that they filmed, authorities said. The video showed the group shooting assault rifles and giving “Heil Hitler” salutes — all while wearing skull masks associated with a neo-Nazi group called Atomwaffen Division, prosecutors said.

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Kryscuk was also seen near a few Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020 and talked about shooting protesters in a conversation with another co-defendant, Jordan Duncan, according to the indictment.

Later that year, a handwritten note found in Kryscuk’s possession showed about 12 places in Idaho and other states that had a transformer, substation or other part for the northwestern U.S.’s power grid.

The Eastern District of North Carolina issued arrest warrants for Kryscuk and Collins on Oct. 15, 2020, and Hermanson’s arrest warrant was issued three days later, according to the court’s docket.

Kryscuk and Collins were arrested Nov. 25, 2020. Hermanson was arrested a few months later, on Jan. 28, 2021.

Kryscuk pleaded guilty in February 2022, while Collins and Hermanson later pleaded guilty in 2023, according to an earlier Justice Department news release. Another man involved in the group, 25-year-old Joseph Maurino, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to manufacture firearms and ship interstate in April 2023. Duncan was the last defendant to enter his deal on June 24, pleading guilty to aiding and abetting the manufacturing of a firearm.

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