FBI arrests member of extremist group Boogaloo in Pomona after gun sale meeting in Murrieta – Orange County Register

The FBI quietly arrested a Pomona man late last month after he apparently tried to sell gun accessories to a local anti-government extremist group to make their guns deadly. and easier to conceal, according to court documents.

Matthew Edward Chen was arrested on January 28, about a week after he sold three automatic devices – devices that can be attached to a gun to make it fully automatic – to a purported member of the gang. “Cali Bois,” a California-based group subscribed to an ideology known as “Boogaloo,” an online movement that wants to bring down the U.S. government by encouraging civil war through violent acts. force.

In court filings, officials said Chen arranged a meeting with what he believed to be a member of Cali Bois at a park in Pomona on January 20, where he sold to the member. This car wheel. What he doesn’t know is that the buyer is an undercover FBI agent. Chen then invited the undercover agent to his Pomona apartment, where he allegedly showed the agent more weapons, a silencer, and video of him shooting in the desert.

“Chen then returned to the kitchen with a rifle around his neck and carrying a Glock semi-automatic pistol. The pistol has a removable storage compartment. The rifle has a removable silencer,” an FBI agent wrote in the January 27 criminal complaint.

“Chen provided (undercover agent) instructions on how to set up auto-search on a Glock pistol and demonstrated how… the pistol worked like a fully automatic firearm.”

The arrest of Chen – who, according to the lawsuit, is himself a member of Cali Bois, who goes by the name “Dolphin” in online chats – on charges of possessing an unregistered firearm, appears to be a part of federal law enforcement is larger than efforts to disrupt groups of Boogaloo believers, who have perpetrated violent attacks on workers and government buildings in recent years.

The term “Boogaloo” as it is used online today emerged around 2013 from groups of internet users who espoused violence in the name of protecting certain Constitutional rights, especially gun ownership, in some of the most extreme picture panels of sites like 4chan and Facebook. Some specific users encourage others to prepare for the Second American Civil War.

Most recently according to the FBI, during the COVID-19 pandemic, “militia-violent extremists have called for ‘Boogaloo’, ‘big igloo’ or ‘big luau’ and used images like igloos or shirts. mi Hawaii to advertise interest or predict an impending war.”

In the complaint, the FBI notes other attacks it believes are inspired by the Boogaloo movement: A 2019 shooting at the Earl Cabell Federal Building in Dallas, in which only the attacker was killed ; and two 2020 shootings in Northern California in which Steven Carrillo, an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, accused of killing a security guard outside a federal building in Oakland and a Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s deputy.

Follow Program on Extremism at George Washington University, which posted criminal charges against Chen, at least six Boogaloo members have been arrested in California since 2021, including two who later pleaded guilty to trying to help Carrillo avoid arrest by federal agents. Hold. Across the country, at least 44 advocates of Boogaloo’s ideology have been arrested in the past two years, according to the program.

For months, the FBI tracked down Cali Bois and infiltrated the group in Southern California, according to the lawsuit.

The undercover agent and an FBI informant attended a meeting with Chen and other members of Cali Bois on October 23, 2021, in the Murrieta garage of a member known as “Unicorn.” and referred to as “AB” in court documents.

At that meeting, Chen gave a PowerPoint presentation explaining how members can comply with the federal law governing home-made handgun silencers, with a slide titled “Everything you don’t want to hear.” supposedly knew about the oppressor.”

Chen sold at least one silencer to the sink dealer at the meeting for $400, according to the lawsuit.

He was not prosecuted. Chen is scheduled to return to court in Downtown Los Angeles for a preliminary hearing on Friday.

Chen was released on February 1, after family friends posted a $120,000 bond. He was also ordered to surrender his passport and gun, and was tracked by US Marshals through an ankle monitor. He was ordered not to leave the Central District of California.

Court documents show that Chen is living in a short-term rental house in Pomona that his father bought. An FBI agent described Chen as a risk when flying because he has dual citizenship and has “evidence of mental problems”. The court ordered Chen to be evaluated by mental health clinicians.

It is unclear from court documents where Chen lived before moving to Pomona, or how long he lived there.

Federal officials could not say Tuesday whether there have been any other arrests for members of Cali Bois other than Chen. In the complaint, the FBI said the Cali Bois Boogaloo group “maintains branches that operate in, among other places, the greater Los Angeles area, the greater San Francisco and Sacramento area, and the greater San Diego area. ”

Court documents have no further information about any other activities by the group or how the FBI found it in the first place.

A federal public defender assigned to Chen did not return a request for comment Tuesday.