Suspected 'ringleader' of planned White House UFC attack will stay in jail

LINCOLN, Neb. (CN) — The man who authorities say was organizing an attack on a UFC fight at the White House called off the plot earlier this month after the FBI began disrupting plans and two conspirators experienced car breakdowns on the way to Washington D.C., an FBI agent testified in a federal courtroom in Nebraska on Monday.

Instead, Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez of Omaha, Nebraska, redirected the plotters in an attempt to instead change the attack to July 4, said Omaha-based FBI Special Agent Seena Ali Soheilian. The agent did not specify the event investigators believe he was attacking.

The revelation came as Alvarez’s private attorney, Stu Dornan, questioned the agent during a probable cause and detention hearing inside a wood-paneled and lime-green-carpeted courtroom of the Robert V. Denney Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Lincoln, Nebraska’s capital city.

Dornan described Alvarez’s change of plans differently to Magistrate Judge Jacqueline M. DeLuca: “My client did an affirmative act to disavow the conspiracy.”

But DeLuca did not see it that way. She found there was probable cause to have arrested Alvarez and that he should remain locked up.

“I do not find there are any conditions that would alleviate the risk of harm to the public,” she said.

Federal authorities have charged Alvarez with conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States and conspiracy to murder. The hearing took place a little more than two weeks after authorities arrested a group of five men, accusing them of plotting an attack against the UFC America 250 event held on the White House South Lawn on June 14.

The U.S. Department of Justice initially charged Alvarez and four others from around the U.S. over their connection to the scheme, including Tycen Proper of Ohio, Daniel Eskridge of Missouri and Bryan Omar Roa and Michael Alan Thomas of California. The DOJ later announced two additional arrests: William Lee Spartacus Falkner in Washington state and Jordan W. Rincker, 28, of Missouri.

The DOJ has said Rinker lives in St. Joseph, Missouri, and Eskridge in Kidder, Missouri, a hamlet of roughly 270 in northwest Missouri about 40 miles from St. Joseph. St. Joseph is a city of about 72,000 residents about 135 miles north of Omaha, where Alvarez lives.

Federal authorities have said in court documentsthe plan was revealed after the mother of Proper, 19, called the local police department on June 10 over concerns regarding her son’s firearms purchase and online communications. Prosecutors say Proper, confessed to the planned attack on the UFC event in an interview with investigators.

Proper told investigators the plan was to stage a demonstration on the north side of the White House. The group would fly drones carrying explosives that would explode above the north side of the UFC arena. “When the unmanned aircraft detonated, the intent was to force the crowd attending the UFC event and high value targets to evacuate to the south,” according to an FBI agent in the arrest affidavit.

Group members would open fire as spectators evacuated. The idea was to “jumpstart” a revolution.

According to the FBI in the complaint against Alvarez, authorities claim he went by the moniker “Shepherd” and provided direction on where to station snipers, launch drones and escape routes.

In text messages, authorities believe Alvarez referred to President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and businessman Elon Musk as “targets confirmed.” Netanyahu did not end up attending the event.

Another message identified an abandoned church in the Saline County village of Western, Nebraska, roughly 45 miles southwest of Lincoln, as a “fall back location.” The texts don’t say why he identified the building, in the middle of a community likely full of voters who had previously cast ballots for Trump, as a good place to hide out or stage a last stand. But Soheilian, a member of the Omaha Joint Terrorism Task Force, said Alvarez owned the building.

The FBI identified Alvarez as a suspect by tracing “Shepherd” to a TikTok account and traced it to an IP address in west Omaha. Omaha-based FBI agents arrested him June 14.

The Department of Homeland Security, describing Alvarez as the “ringleader” of the plot, has announced that Alvarez entered the U.S. on a visitor visa that expired in December 2001. In 2014, the federal government allowed him to stay under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

In court Monday, Alvarez — tall with a large shock of black, curly, hair and beard — wore the orange jumpsuit of the Saline County Jail in nearby Wilber. He nodded to some loved ones in the back of the court as he sat down next to Dornan.

Soheilian told the court that investigators could trace the attack to earlier in June as Alvarez began locating and assessing people he met online. He was upset about the current state of affairs in the United States, but exactly what he was mad about was not discussed.

At some point Rinker visited Alvarez in Omaha, where they exchanged gear to aid in the attack, including weapons and ballistic vests and cash.

“Is it true he recommended against the June 14 plot before anything ever happened?” Dornan asked him.

“He made a statement he wanted to call it because of technical issues,” Soheilian said. “And also because we had disrupted it.”

Only one of the plotters made it to Washington, it turned out. And that person did a reconnaissance of the locations and returned home.

Alvarez himself was arrested in Omaha on June 14. They did not have any evidence that he had purchased an airplane, bus or train ticket.

After Alvarez was excused, both Dornan and Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine argued whether Alvarez should be released. Dornan felt he should be allowed to stay with his mother-in-law in Omaha with electronic monitoring.

Kleine recited the evidence against Alvarez, calling it an “evolving, coordinated, conspiracy.” It involved several people. They targeted federal officials. And, Kline said, he was not legally in the United States.

“The reason the disaster didn’t happen is that the FBI was able to stop it,” Kleine told DeLuca. “Mr. Alvarez is a danger to the community … he is an extreme flight risk.”

Dornan described his client as “gainfully employed.” There was no “overt act” to the suspected plot.

“Nobody ended up going to Washington, D.C.,” he said. “Well, one person did, but then withdrew.”

In the end, DeLuca said he would remain locked up pending further proceedings. U.S. Attorney Leslie Woods told reporters in brief remarks afterward that it was “a just outcome.” The effort of the plotters may seem amateurish, but some had started traveling, she said.

Conspiracy to commit murder carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, while conviction of conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States carries a maximum sentence of five years.

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