Antisemitic group’s leader sentenced to 30 days in jail for littering in South Florida

The leader of a well-known antisemitic group will spend the next 30 days in jail, months after he tossed flyers with hateful content onto Palm Beach County residents’ properties, live-streamed it on social media and told police he would continue to toss them, even after he was cited.

Jon Minadeo, 40, is the leader of the Goyim Defense League, which the Anti-Defamation League has said is a “loose network of individuals connected by their virulent antisemitism” in several states but most notably in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, New York, South Carolina and Texas.

The group has thousands of online followers, runs a video platform site that streams antisemitic content and “engages in antisemitic stunts and schemes,” according to the ADL.

In recent years, extremist groups across the state have scattered other flyers, dropped banners from overpasses on interstates 4 and 95, held neo-Nazi rallies near Disney World and altered digital signs to share antisemitic messages. Antisemitic messages have also been projected onto buildings in different parts of the state.

Though Minadeo’s 30-day sentence is punishment for a misdemeanor charge of attempting to commit dumping of litter and not for the content of the flyers, that could change going forward, Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said at a news conference Thursday announcing Minadeo’s sentence.

Minadeo was convicted at trial Monday, and discussion of what the flyers said was not introduced at his trial. Aronberg said his office asked the judge to sentence him to the maximum possible — 60 days.

Aronberg said that because what the flyers said was not involved in Minadeo’s conviction, he is confident it will be upheld if there’s an appeal.

“… They’re being prosecuted not for the content of the material, but for the fact that they were dumping litter,” Aronberg said. “That’s something that these neo-Nazis didn’t understand. They thought the First Amendment protected them, but littering is still a crime. Whether you’re spreading antisemitic filth or charitable flyers, you can’t dump litter onto people’s lawns.”

Rep. Mike Caruso’s bill, HB 269, was passed this year and went into effect in July. The law gives prosecutors a new way to hold people accountable for their intent, after the slew of recent antisemitic incidents.

The law, in part, says if someone intentionally dumps litter onto private property to intimidate the owner or resident, and that litter contains a “credible threat,” they could be charged with a third-degree felony. It also makes the intentional displaying or projecting of images onto buildings or property without written consent a first-degree misdemeanor and a third-degree felony if they display a credible threat.

“We use this charge of littering because it was the only tool in our arsenal against these hate mongers,” Aronberg said Thursday. “Now, because of a bill sponsored by Rep. Mike Caruso, we have new arrows in our quiver. We have new powers to go after these individuals criminally for spreading their filth. The next time they get arrested, it just won’t be for a misdemeanor. It could be for a felony, and it could be for the contents of their literature.”

On March 18, West Palm Beach Police officers talked to numerous residents in the 600 and 700 blocks of Avon Road and Sunset Road and the 2500 block of Georgia Avenue, reporting baggies with white paper and brown pellets being thrown on their property, according to a probable cause affidavit. What the flyers said is not included in the affidavit.

Minadeo was riding in the bed of a pick-up truck with Nicholas Bysheim, 33, both tossing the baggies into the street and onto peoples’ properties while David Kim, 61, slowly drove them, the affidavit said. They were all issued littering citations.

After they received the citations, they told law enforcement they’d continue throwing the baggies, according to the affidavit. Officers confiscated all the materials from the bed of the truck, about 500 baggies of flyers and pellets weighing nearly 50 pounds in total.

Bysheim pleaded guilty in August to resisting an officer without violence from a case in January where he refused to provide identification while being issued a littering citation and separately to misdemeanor charges related to the March incident with Minadeo and Kim, the State Attorney’s Office said in a news release in August.

The State Attorney’s Office asked for a 364-day sentence. Bysheim received a total of 12 months probation, the news release said.

A judge found Kim guilty in two separate cases stemming from the March 18 incident and a similar incident on March 11, also with Minadeo and Bysheim and two others, Jeffrey Kidder and Brian Hulliger, according to court records. Kim was sentenced to a total of 12 months probation between the two cases.

Minadeo will be in court again Monday pertaining to the separate March 11 case for a plea conference.

Hulliger’s next court date is in December. There is an active warrant for Kidder’s arrest after he failed to appear for arraignment in July, State Attorney’s Office spokesperson Marc Freeman said in an email Thursday afternoon.

Over the Labor Day weekend, flyers distributed at homes in Central Florida disparaged Jewish public health officials, made bizarre and sexually explicit claims about Judaism and implored readers to “protect the purity of the white Aryan woman.”

The flyers invited readers to learn more about the Goyim Defense League.

Florida has seen a significant increase in extremist incidents between 2020 and 2022, according to the ADL’s Hate in the Sunshine State report. THE ADL Center on Extremism documented over 400 instances of white supremacist propaganda being distributed in the state and a 40% rise in antisemitic incidents in 2020 and a 50% rise in 2021.

Hate crimes against Jewish people make up 80% of the religiously-motivated incidents in the state in 2020, according to the ADL’s report.

“Since 2020 in Florida, new white supremacist groups have formed, while some existing neo-Nazi and accelerationist groups have broadened their audience through both online and on-the-ground activities,” the report’s executive summary said. “Other extremist groups have shifted their strategies to focus on the local level, disrupting school board meetings and even running for political office.”

One of the actions the ADL suggested officials take after the latest report was to pass legislation to address the incidents.

A law similar to the one newly passed was ruled unconstitutional about 20 years ago, Aronberg said, but it was broader. He said Caruso learned from that bill to create HB 269, which he believes could uphold any constitutional challenges.

“We’re gonna enforce that law until a judge says we can’t,” Aronberg said. “I think the law is written in a way where it could withstand constitutional scrutiny.”