Former Marine from RI with white supremacist ties sentenced in plot to blow up a power grid.

PROVIDENCE – A Rhode Island man and former U.S. Marine who landed on the radar of authorities thanks to his posts on a white supremacist message board will serve 10 years in prison for his role in a plot to destroy a power grid in the northwestern United States.

Liam Montgomery Collins, 25, of Johnston, was sentenced Wednesday for trafficking hard-to-trace firearms as part of the Neo-Nazi conspiracy.

“As part of a self-described ‘modern day SS,’ these defendants conspired, prepared, and trained to attack America’s power grid in order to advance their violent white supremacist ideology,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement. “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.”

Posts on Neo Nazi message board lead to arrest

According to court documents, Collins was first arrested in October 2020 on firearms charges for purchasing a 9mm pistol and suppressor, as well as a short barrel rifle from a fellow conspirator in Boise, Idaho, who manufactured hard-to-trace weapons. Collins made contact with Paul James Kryscuk, 38, due to his many posts on the now defunct Iron March Neo-Nazi message board.

Known as "Disciple," Collins frequently posted on Iron March under the name "Niezgoda” – Polish for conflict with neighbors, according to a Cambridge Dictionary translation.

A judge ordered him held in 2020 as a safety risk to the community and due his likelihood to flee prosecution.

Kryscuk was sentenced to six years and six months in prison for conspiracy to destroy an energy facility. Another co-conspirator, Justin Wade Hermanson, 25, of Swansboro, North Carolina, received one year and nine months in prison for conspiracy to manufacture firearms and ship them interstate.

According to court documents, Kryscuk, Collins, and Hermanson studied a previous attack on the power grid that involved assault-style rifles in an attempt to explode a power substation.

Between 2017 and 2020, Kryscuk manufactured firearms while Collins stole military gear during his stint at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, including body armor, magazines for assault-style rifles, and had them delivered to others using fictitious names to conceal their identities.

During that time, another alleged co-conspirator, Jordan Duncan – who authorities say Collins recruited at Camp Lejeune – gathered "a library of information" – some of which belonged to the military – related to firearms, explosives, and nerve toxins.

Duncan shared that information with Kryscuk and Collins. In October 2020, a handwritten list of a dozen places in Idaho and surrounding states was discovered in Kryscuk’s possession that detailed locations of transformers, substations, or other components of the power grid for the northwest United States.

According to authorities, they planned to attack the power grid with the "purpose of creating general chaos and to provide cover and ease of escape in those areas in which they planned to undertake assassinations and other desired operations to further their goal of creating a white ethno-state."

'Modern day SS'

According to authorities, Collins – who pled guilty last year – discussed recruitment for a group he described as "a modern day SS" located in northeastern United States.

In 2016, Collins posted he was organizing a paramilitary defense force in which “everyone [in the group] is going to be required to have served in a nation's military, whether US, UK, or Poland” as a long-term goal.

He wrote “I'll be in the USMC for 4 years while my comrades work on the groups [sic] physical formation."

He wrote that, while it will take years to gather the experience and intelligence the group would need, "that's what makes it fun."

"It takes a man's willpower and heart to make a commitment like this," he wrote.

He said he was giving four years to the Marines "for the cause" and that most of his money was put into equipment for himself and his group.

In addition to Duncan, Collins and Kryscuk recruited more alleged co-conspirators, including Hermanson, and Joseph Maurino, authorities said. The stated goals, Kryscuk said, were knocking down the system as they exist, seizing territory and the Balkanization of North America, according to documents. They intended to buy property in remote, predominantly white and right leaning areas where they would network with locals, train, farm and stockpile weaponry and supplies.

In August 2017, Collins reported he had a "tightknit crew" of ex-military and security personnel who gathered for hikes, gym sessions, live firing exercises, and "eventually plan to buy a lot of land." The crew went camping together in the summer of 2017, authorities said.

Collins, Kryscuk and other members of the group conducted live-fire training in the desert near Boise, Idaho, and recorded footage of Kryscuk, Duncan and others firing short barrel rifles and other assault-style weapons.

The video ends, authorities said, with four participants outfitted in Atomwaffen masks and giving the “Heil Hitler” sign beneath the image of a black sun, a Nazi symbol. The last frame bears the phrase, “Come home white man.”

Prior to their arrests, Collins and Duncan had relocated to Idaho from North Carolina and Texas, respectively, to be near Kryscuk.

The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies Atomwaffen Division as a terroristic neo-Nazi organization that formed out of Iron March, an influential fascist forum that went offline in fall 2017.

It says that the organization consists of a series of terror cells that work toward society’s collapse. Its members believe that violence, depravity and degeneracy are the only sure way to establish order in their dystopian and apocalyptic vision of the world, according to the center.

Atomwaffen distinguishes itself by its extreme rhetoric and is influenced by neo-Nazi writings, including those by James Mason, who admired Charles Manson and supported the idea of lone wolf violence, federal prosecutors said.

According to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Marines, Collins served from August 2017 through September 2020, achieving the rank of Lance Corporal, E3. His "premature discharge is indicative of the fact that the character of his service was incongruent with Marine Corps' expectations and standards," she said.

The FBI, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives investigated the case.

This is a developing story

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Rhode Island man sentenced in Neo-Nazi plot to destroy power grid