Ex-Marines based in NC made Nazi training montage video in Idaho desert, feds say
A training video filmed over the summer showed men shooting guns in the desert and saluting Adolf Hitler with the message “come home white man” in the final title sequence, according to the federal government.
One of them was a U.S. Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors have linked the men featured in the video to the defunct white supremacy forum known as the “Iron March” in a cross-country weapons manufacturing conspiracy involving hard-to-get guns, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina said Friday in a news release.
Four men have now been charged with conspiring to manufacture, transport and sell hard-to-obtain firearms and firearm parts in the Eastern District. Three were arrested on Oct. 20 in Idaho when the original indictment was announced.
Ex-Marines Liam Montgomery Collins, 21, and Jordan Duncan, 25, were charged first with 35-year-old Paul James Kryscuk. Justin Wade Hermanson, 21, was charged in the superseding indictment on Wednesday.
Hermanson is also a Marine from North Carolina, prosecutors said.
According to the superseding indictment, the origins of the alleged scheme date to 2016 when Collins joined the Iron March group. Prosecutors described it as an “online message board platform used for communications and posts by neo-Nazi and White Supremacy Extremist groups” that was active from March 2011 to November 2017.
The Atomwaffen Division — an active organization which the Southern Poverty Law Center designates as a hate group with “terror cells that work toward civilizational collapse” — was formed out of Iron March.
Collins was born in Sweden but moved to New Jersey in high school and was stationed at Camp Lejeune from 2017 to 2020, according to court filings. Prosecutors said he frequently posted on the group using the name “Niezgoda.” He allegedly talked about recruiting new members for “a modern day SS,” saying “it will take years to gather all the experience and intelligence that we need to utilize — but that’s what makes it fun.”
Collins met Kryscuk on the message board, according to court filings.
In 2017, prosecutors said Kryscuk wrote about “knocking down The System,” having to “bring the rifles out and go to work” and “taking back the land that is rightfully ours.”
“Second order of business ... is the seizing of territory and the Balkanization of North America,” he wrote on the forum, according to court filings. “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.”
Duncan eventually became part of Collins’ “crew” while he was stationed at Camp Lejeune, and the three were photographed together in December 2018, court filings state.
The trio began coordinating payments and deliveries of guns in January 2019, including a 9 mm pistol and an assault rifle, prosecutors said.
Kryscuk, who is from New York, moved to Boise, Idaho, in February 2020 and discussed his weapons manufacturing with the group on Iron March, according to court filings. Prosecutors said he wrote “the final frontier is real life violence” and that he was “acquiring some serious skills” that made him “pretty lethal.”
Duncan then met Kryscuk in July in Boise for a “live-fire weapons training,” court filings state. Prosecutors described the video that resulted as “a montage video of their training” in Friday’s news release.
“This video depicts Kryscuk and another individual firing short barrel rifles and each of the participants firing assault-style rifles,” the superseding indictment states. “The end of the video shows the four participants outfitted in AtomWaffen masks masks giving the ‘Heil Hitler’ sign, beneath the image of a black sun. The last frame of the video displays the statement, ‘Come home white man.’”
Duncan, who became a government contractor after leaving the Marines in 2018, followed Kryscuk to Boise in September, prosecutors said. Collins allegedly did the same in October after he was released from the Marines.
The group allegedly amassed a small armory of three 9 mm pistols with a suppressor, four lightweight semiautomatic rifles and at least two short barrel rifles — all built by Kryscuk — by the time they were arrested in October.
Hermanson is separately accused of having “videos, images and communications consistent with ideology expressed by Kryscuk and AtomWaffen,” court filings state. Prosecutors said he also coordinated payments with Kryscuk to manufacture weapons and have them sent to North Carolina, and he allegedly recruited at least one other member to join their group.
The four men face a myriad of charges in the Eastern District, from conspiracy to manufacture firearms and ship them interstate, to interstate transportation of firearms without a license or registration.
Collins and Kryscuk face up to 20 years in prison if convicted, according to the release. Hermanson faces up to 10 years, and Duncan faces up to five years.
This story was originally published November 20, 2020 at 7:17 PM with the headline "Ex-Marines based in NC made Nazi training montage video in Idaho desert, feds say."
