Sam Resto, a New York City anarchist and BLM activist who wanted to create a terrorist organization modeled after ISIS appears to have gotten time served (26 months) for setting fire to a NYPD van during the 2020 George Floyd riots.
We say 'appears' because very unusually, no judgment was filed, but we can see in other items that a sentencing *did* take place
He's not in the BOP lookup, meaning that the sentence he was asking for (time served) appears to have been granted. Feds wanted only 48-72 months
In addition to this @EDNYnews didn't put out any press releases on the case apart from the initial arrest one (pics)
No local/national news outlets covered it either. The sentencing took place 3 months ago, so we missed it then too. We found when updating fed court tracking data
There was a bit of info in the memo detailing crimes, some highlights-
Resto defaced the George Washington statue in WSP, then told a cop he was planning on destroying the Christopher Columbus statue. He seemed quite prepared for this, having mapped out cameras to destroy
Cops were at the statue when he went there for the action, so he then started planning to torch a cop car.
Was present at multiple BLM protests, and even arrested at one while blocking the Brooklyn Bridge. Tagged a NYPD van as a bomb threat (w/ anarchist symbol) after that
Resto had created a small group, with a cop in it. They used an encrypted group chat for communication
At the time of the arson the cop and other people in the group were trying to talk him out of it.
He didn't take the advice and torched the cop car.
The planning for the terrorist organization wasn't minimal as well, planning out organizational structure, initiation process, opsec, etc.
The 'initiation process' to get into the terror organization would be to burn a random police car
Resto ended up being arrested at his work, hiding under a desk. He texted “cops at my job everybody
run” to the encrypted group chat
He had his passport and had graffiti'd "too late" on his apartment's wall, likely indicating he was going to flee.
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