2 white supremacists tried to spark race war by soliciting murder and hate crimes on Telegram, feds say

Two white supremacists hoping to start a race war were charged with leading a digital terrorist group on Telegram and directing followers to commit hate crimes, including killing federal officials, prosecutors said.

Dallas Humber, 34, of Elk Grove, California, and Matthew Allison, 37, of Boise, Idaho, are charged in the 15-count indictment with soliciting hate crimes, soliciting the murder of federal officials and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California said in a statement Monday.

Federal prosecutors allege Humber and Allison are leaders of the "Terrorgram Collective," which authorities described as a "transnational terrorist group."

Humber and Allison were arrested Friday, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, which was unsealed Monday, the defendants' terrorist group operated on the digital messaging platform Telegram. The group promoted white supremacist "accelerationism": "an ideology centered on the belief that the white race is superior; that society is irreparably corrupt and cannot be saved by political action; and that violence and terrorism are necessary to ignite a race war and accelerate the collapse of the government and the rise of a white ethnostate," prosecutors said.

No one with Telegram could immediately be reached for comment Monday afternoon. It was not immediately clear Monday afternoon whether Humber and Allison have retained attorneys.

According to the indictment, Telegram allows users from around the world to send encrypted, one-on-one messages, participate in group chats and share files.

Humber and Allison are accused of spreading videos and publications that provided specific advice for carrying out crimes, celebrating white terrorism attacks and providing a list of "high-value targets" for assassination while they were on the platform. The list included names of federal, state and local officials and leaders of private companies, many of whom were targeted because of race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity, prosecutors said.

The defendants operated channels and group chats where they solicited group members to commit attacks, authorities said.

The planned attacks were motivated by enemies of the white race, and they described hitting government buildings, including energy facilities, prosecutors said.

The planned attacks also included “high-value targets" like politicians and government officials whose murders would "sow chaos and further accelerate the government’s downfall," prosecutors said.

Some of the planned attacks inspired by the defendants were actually carried out or were foiled, prosecutors said. They include an attack by a person who shot three people, killing two, outside an LGBTQ bar in Slovakia; a planned attack on an energy facility in New Jersey; and an attack by a person who stabbed five people near a mosque in Turkey, prosecutors said.

They were charged with one count of conspiracy, four counts of soliciting hate crimes, three counts of soliciting the murder of federal officials, three counts of doxing federal officials, one count of threatening communications, two counts of distributing bomb-making instructions and one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, prosecutors said.

If convicted on all charges, they face maximum penalties of 220 years in prison, prosecutors said. Allison is expected to make his first court appearance Tuesday, according to prosecutors.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in the statement that the arrests and indictments of the suspects "are a warning that committing hate-fueled crimes in the darkest corners of the internet will not hide you, and soliciting terrorist attacks from behind a screen will not protect you."

Phillip A. Talbert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, said in the statement: "The defendants solicited murders and hate crimes based on the race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, and gender identity of others."

He continued, “They also doxed and solicited the murder of federal officials, conspired to provide material support to terrorists, and distributed information about explosives that they intended to be used in committing crimes of violence."

Humber and Allison joined Terrorgram in 2019 and became leaders of the group in the summer of 2022, according to the indictment. The defendants rose to leadership when a previous leader was arrested and charged with terrorism crimes and another leader became aware that he was the subject of an investigation related to terrorism, the indictment said.

According to the indictment, the defendants inspired other group members to commit attacks, touting “white supremacist attackers as heroes of the white race” and labeling them as "Saints."

Humber and Allison also distributed a publication explaining and justifying the group's ideology, describing how to attack "critical infrastructure" and providing instructions for how to make explosives, including napalm, thermite, pipe bombs and dirty bombs, according to the indictment.

After a fatal police shooting in France that led to protests, Humber posted a picture of a sniper pointing a rifle, prosecutors alleged. The post included the message to "ARMED AND POTENTIALLY LETAL FRENCH Bros," they said.

According to the indictment, Humber's message with the photo read: "Don't cower in your rooms, waiting for the n----- riots to stop. Instead, load your magazines and get cozy."

Late last month, Telegram’s multibillionaire CEO and co-founder, Pavel Durov, was charged in France with enabling various forms of criminality in the app.

One of the charges, complicity in administering an online platform permitting illicit transactions by an organized group, carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, prosecutors said.

In his first public comments since his arrest, he wrote on his Telegram channel Thursday that he is aware of criticism about the app’s lack of oversight and that changes to the app were coming. He also criticized his arrest.

“We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon. Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach," Durov said. "Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com