WILMINGTON, N.C. (WGHP) — A former Camp Lejeune Marine from North Carolina has been sentenced for his involvement in an interstate gun conspiracy.
On Thursday, Jordan Duncan, who was once stationed at Camp Lejeune before moving to Texas and then Idaho, was sentenced to prison for shipping weapons interstate as part of an investigation into a plot to destroy electrical infrastructure and stage a neo-Nazi “takeover of local government and industry,” according to court documents.
Duncan pleaded guilty to a charge of manufacturing a firearm in violation of law and aiding and abetting in June 2024, and, on Monday, he was sentenced to seven years in prison with three years of supervised release.
Duncan was among five men charged and subsequently found guilty in the scheme.
Earlier this summer, Liam Collins, Justin Hermanson and Paul Kryscuk were sentenced as well.
Collins, a New Jersey man who was stationed at Camp Lejeune at the time of the crimes, was sentenced to 10 years in prison with three years of supervised release on the charge of interstate transportation of a firearm not registered as required. Charges of “destruction of an energy facility” and conspiracy were dismissed when he pleaded guilty.
Hermanson, a North Carolina man who was in the same Marine unit as Collins at Camp Lejeune, was sentenced to one year and nine months in prison and three years of supervised release on a charge of conspiracy to manufacture firearms and ship interstate, with an interstate transportation charge dismissed.
Kryscuk was sentenced to six and a half years in prison and three years of supervised release on a charge of conspiracy to destroy an energy facility, with manufacturing and shipping firearms charges dismissed as part of his guilty plea.
At the time of their arrest, the men all lived in Boise, Idaho.
In June of 2021, Joseph Maurino, a New Jersey National Guardsman, was also indicted, accused of supplying untraceable guns to the other men. Maurino pleaded guilty in April 2023. It is unclear when he will be sentenced.
Background
In October 2020, Collins, Kryscuk and Duncan were charged with conspiracy to unlawfully manufacture, possess and distribute various weapons and weapon accessories. All of the charges came from the Eastern District of North Carolina.
Documents filed by Duncan in August state that the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was investigating after Collins claimed to the other defendants that he could get weapons without serial numbers, as well as silencers. Investigators traced money spent on the purchase of a firearm from Collins to Kryscuk, who pleaded guilty in February 2022.
In November 2020, Hermanson was charged with one count of conspiracy to manufacture firearms and ship interstate. After two superseding indictments, he pleaded guilty on March 8, 2022.
In August 2021, Kryscuk, Collins, Duncan and Maurino received a third superseding indictment. They were charged with conspiracy to damage property of a United States energy facility.
The indictment alleges that the four men researched and discussed at length a previous attack on power infrastructure by an unknown group, using assault-style rifles. The indictment alleges that for three years, between 2017 and 2020, Kryscuk manufactured guns and Collins, stationed at Camp Lejeune at the time, stole military gear and had it delivered to the other men. Duncan gathered “a library of information,” some military-owned, about weapons, toxins and explosives.
Documents also go into detail about how Collins and Kryscuk met on “Iron March,” a now-defunct forum for neo-Nazis to organize and recruit. They moved to encrypted messaging to talk outside of the forum, allegedly recruiting the other three accused men.
Video footage obtained shows the men shooting guns, wearing “AtomWaffen-masks” while giving Nazi salutes, according to court documents and first shared by RawStory. The phrase “come home white man” is seen in the video. Atomwaffen Division was a violent neo-Nazi sect co-founded by Brandon Russell, who is currently awaiting trial for his own accusations of conspiracy to destroy energy facilities in Maryland.
Similar cases
In April, Jonathan Frost was sentenced to five years in prison, and Christopher Cook received seven years and eight months in prison, both on a count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. Both men will be under supervision for two and a half years after release. A third conspirator, Jonathan Sawall, was ordered to be hospitalized.
The indictment states that the men met online and began planning to attack electrical infrastructure around the country, each man assigned specific locations. When they got together in Columbus, they graffitied a bridge at an area park with a swastika and the words “Join the Front.” Court documents indicate they were taken back into custody and had various electronics seized on Dec. 5, 2022.
In February 2023, Russell and his girlfriend, Sarah Clendaniel, were charged with plotting an attack against the power grid in Baltimore, Maryland, with Russell being accused of sharing a YouTube video about the attack on Duke Energy substations in Moore County as part of their planning.
While several people have been sentenced or charged for plotting electrical substation attacks that never came to fruition, over the span of a few short months, there were three separate incidents of substations being shot at in North Carolina.
The first, which took place on Nov. 11, 2022, in Jones County, left 12,000 people without power for a couple of hours after a Carteret-Craven Electrical Cooperative substation was shot.
On Dec. 3, 2022, two Duke Energy substations in Moore County were shot. One person died as a direct result of the Moore County power outage, a death that the medical examiner ruled a homicide.
Then, on Jan. 17, 2023, an EnergyUnited substation was shot in Randolph County, but no one lost power. The FBI is offering thousands in rewards for information on these three shootings.
Two weeks after the Moore County shooting, at the beginning of Hanukkah, a banner adorned with Nazi imagery advertising a Telegram channel for the “National Socialist Resistance Front” was unfurled on a highway overpass in Vass, and a second banner was found on Christmas in Cameron. The Telegram shown on the banner had numerous Nazi memes and graphics, including what appeared to be an image, posted just two days after the Jones County shooting, of a person’s silhouette in front of an electrical substation with the words “bring it all down,” a phrase that was also featured on the first banner.
The Moore County Sheriff’s Office said at the time that they were investigating these incidents separately.
