Washington — Federal prosecutors in California unsealed an indictment Monday accusing two people of leading an online white supremacist group that kept a list of known assassination targets and encouraged group members to commit hate crimes.
A 37-page indictment filed on September 5 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California alleges that Dallas Erin Humber and Matthew Robert Allison led the group known as “Terrorgram,” a network of channels, group chats and users on the app Telegram that promotes “white supremacist accelerationism.” The ideology is described in the court documents as “centered on the belief that the white race is superior” and that violence and terrorism are necessary to incite a race war to accelerate the collapse of government and the rise of the “white ethnostate.”
Humber, 34, and Allison, 37, face 15 federal charges, including incitement to murder a federal officer, incitement to commit a hate crime and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. Humber is from Elk Grove, California, and Allison is from Boise, Idaho. Officials said Allison is expected to make her initial court appearance Tuesday.
Deputy Attorney General Kristen Clarke said the indictment shows the “new technological face of white supremacist violence.”
Prosecutors allege Humber and Allison took over the group in 2022, after one of its leaders was arrested and charged with terrorism offenses. As the new leaders of the so-called Terrorgram Collective, the indictment alleges the defendants distributed videos and publications titled “The Hard Reset,” “White Terror” and “The List,” and urged group members to carry out attacks against “racial enemies” and critical infrastructure.
“The List” is described in the indictment as a hit list of “high-value” targets for assassination, with their names, addresses and photographers. The names included a U.S. senator, a federal district judge and a former U.S. prosecutor, as well as state and local officials and leaders of private companies and nongovernmental organizations, the indictment said.
Court documents show that Allison encouraged Terrorgram members to kill the victims, telling them to “take action now” and “do their part.”
In addition to the kill list, prosecutors say Allison and Humber provided instructions on how to make and detonate bombs. They also shared a five-step instructional video that explained, among other things, how to find the location of a “government building” that would be a “suitable target” and how to avoid being captured by police.
Federal investigators allege the pair encouraged users to “carry out the planned attacks” and urged their followers to “immortalize themselves in the Pantheon.” According to charging documents, some members of Humber and Allison’s online group were inspired to carry out attacks around the world.
Prosecutors said several attacks or planned attacks in recent years could be linked to the defendants’ group, including an October 2022 shooting at an LGBTQ bar in Slovakia that killed two people and an attack in Turkey in which five people were stabbed outside a mosque. U.S. investigators also foiled a plot in New Jersey in which an 18-year-old planned to attack a power plant in July, prosecutors said.
In announcing the charges Monday, Justice Department officials alleged that Allison and Humber were not only “inspirational” in their planning, but also sought to inspire attacks. In some cases, they provided potential attackers with actionable plans and urged their members to carry them out.
“These are not empty words,” Matt Olsen, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said Monday.
