Staff Report –
Another neo-Nazi who threatened the lives of American journalists for covering the news along with advocates against anti-Semitism pleaded guilty this week in federal court and will do time in prison, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Cameron Shea, 25, a leader of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division, pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal conspiracy and hate crime charges in the U. S. District Court for the Western District of Washington for threatening journalists and workers for the Anti-Defamation League, according to Acting U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman.
Shea pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to commit three offenses against the United States, including interference with federally-protected activities because of religion, mailing threatening communications and cyberstalking.
Shea and three co-defendants were charged with conspiring in an encrypted online chat group to identify journalists and threaten workers for the Anti-Defamation League. The plan was motivated by negative news coverage the Atomwaffen Division had received, they said.
The group focused primarily on those who are Jewish or journalists of color, creating posters featuring Nazi symbols, masked figures with guns and Molotov cocktails, and sending threatening messages through the mail. Shea messaged the group that he wanted Atomwaffen members in different locations to place posters on their victims’ homes on the same night to catch journalists off guard and accomplish a “show of force,” according to charging documents.
The posters were delivered to victims in Tampa, Florida, Seattle, Washington, and Phoenix, Arizona. Shea mailed posters to several victims, including a poster sent to an official at the Anti-Defamation League that depicted a Grim Reaper-like figure wearing a skeleton mask holding a Molotov cocktail outside a residence, with the text “Our Patience Has Its Limits . . . You have been visited by your local Nazis.”
Shea faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for the hate crime charge and 5 years for the conspiracy charge and will be sentenced June 28.
Two of his co-defendants, Ashley Parker-Dipeppe, 21, of Spring Hill, Florida, and Johnny Roman Garza, 21, of Queen Creek, Arizona, previously pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge and were sentenced. The fourth co-defendant, Kaleb Cole, 24, of Arlington, Washington, pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial in September. Seattle police seized Cole’s guns in 2019 under an “extreme risk protection order” that suggested he was planning a race war.
Garza was sentenced to 16 months in prison. Parker-Dipeppe, who suffered severe abuse from his father and stepfather and who hid his transgender identity from his co-conspirators, received no prison time. A judge found that he had suffered enough in his young life.
More than a dozen people linked to Atomwaffen or an offshoot called Feuerkrieg Division have been charged with crimes in federal court since the group’s formation in 2016. Atomwaffen has been linked to several killings, including the May 2017 shooting deaths of two men at an apartment in Tampa, Florida, and the January 2018 killing of a University of Pennsylvania student in California.
The Atomwaffen Division (Atomwaffen meaning “nuclear weapons” in German), also known as the National Socialist Order is a neo-Nazi terrorist network formed in 2015 and based in the American South. It has since expanded across the United States and into the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, the Baltic states and other European countries. The group is part of the alt-right that supported Donald Trump, although the group rejects the label and is considered extreme even within that movement. It is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and a terrorist group by multiple governments.
Atomwaffen advocates attacks on the federal government of the United States, minorities, gays, Jews, and burns copies of the United States Constitution and flag in its propaganda videos. Atomwaffen Division has engaged in several mass murder plots, plans to cripple public water systems and destroy parts of the Continental U.S. power transmission grid. Atomwaffen has also been accused of planning to blow up nuclear plants in order to cause nuclear meltdowns. The organization’s aim is to violently overthrow the federal government of the United States via terrorism and guerrilla warfare tactics. Since 2017, the organization has been linked to eight killings in the U.S. and several violent hate crimes, including assaults, rapes and multiple cases of kidnapping and torture.
The case is being investigated by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Tampa, Seattle, Houston, and Phoenix with assistance from the Seattle Police Department.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Thomas Woods and Civil Rights Division Trial Attorney Michael J. Songer, with assistance from U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in the Middle District of Florida, Southern District of Texas, District of Arizona, and Central District of California.
