Former Camp Lejeune Marine, last of five charged with targeting energy facility, pleads guilty to charges

WILMINGTON, N.C. – A former Camp Lejeune Marine who was the last of five defendants in the case of power grids being attacked pleaded guilty on Monday.

Jordan Duncan, 29, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the manufacturing of a firearm as charged in superseding criminal information, according to Office of Michael Easley Jr., US Attorney, Eastern District of NC. The crime carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in prison.

Duncan is a former Marine assigned previously to Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville.

According to court documents, Duncan, with co-defendants, Paul James Kryscuk, 38, Liam Collins, 25, Justin Wade Hermanson, 25, and Joseph Maurino, 25, researched, discussed, and reviewed at length a previous attack on the power grid by an unknown group. The group depicted in the attack used assault-style rifles in an attempt to explode a power substation.

All five defendants await sentencing before Chief United States District Judge Richard E. Myers II.

Between 2017 and 2020, officials said Kryscuk manufactured firearms while Collins stole military gear, including magazines for assault-style rifles, and had them delivered to the other defendants. During that time, Duncan gathered a library of information, some military-owned, regarding guns, explosives, and nerve toxins and shared that information with Kryscuk and Collins, according to court documents.

In October 2020, a handwritten list of approximately a dozen intersections and places in Idaho and surrounding states was discovered in Kryscuk’s possession, including intersections and/or places containing a transformer, substation, or other component of the power grid for the northwest United States. 

The previously filed charges alleged that Collins and Kryscuk were members of and made multiple posts on the “Iron March” forum, a gathering point for young neo-Nazis to organize and recruit for extremist organizations until the forum was closed in late 2017. Officials also said Collins and Kryscuk met through the forum and expanded their group using an encrypted messaging application as an alternate means of communication outside of the forum.  Collins and Kryscuk recruited additional members, including Duncan, Hermanson and Maurino, and conducted training, including a live-fire training in the desert near Boise, Idaho.

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