Long Beach terror plot case highlights new challenges for investigators as online recruiting grows
By Josh Cain
Los Angeles Daily News
May 1, 2019
The Southern California man accused of plotting a bomb attack at a Long Beach rally last weekend fit the profile of other extremists bent on violence over the past two decades, counter-terrorism experts said Wednesday.
But Mark Domingo also represents a new threat of deep concern to terrorism investigators — the growing use of online forums and other internet tools to link isolated, frustrated young people with extremist groups.
FBI investigators in Los Angeles said they were first alerted to Domingo, a 26-year-old former U.S. Army infantryman from Reseda, when he allegedly posted violent statements in an online private message group for Muslims.
His first statement in a video message was made March 2; in it, he proclaimed his faith in Islam, according an FBI affidavit filed in court following Domingo’s arrest.
By the next day, he was calling for an attack on the level of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting that killed 58 people.
“Its not about winning the civil war its about weakening america giving them a taste of the terror they gladly spread all over the world,” he wrote.
Ryan Young, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said Domingo showed a “rapid” change from “radicalization to mobilization to violence.”
Britton Schaefer, a former member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, said Wednesday that Domingo’s profile of an apparently troubled young person quickly radicalized online was familiar.
Schaefer noted the case of Enrique Marquez Jr., who was convicted for his role in the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack.
Like Marquez, Domingo was a non-Muslim who converted to Islam. But Domingo’s shift to plotting an attack occurred even faster than it did for Marquez, who eventually abandoned plotting with Syed Farook.
That was years before Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Mailk, killed 14 of Farook’s coworkers at the Inland Regional Center, but not before Marquez supplied the couple with weapons. All three were radicalized after consuming extremist views online.
U.S Attorney Nicola Hanna called Domingo a “recent convert” to Islam. And Domingos’ family said he had only converted about three months before his arrest.
Local Muslim leaders have said, after reading the affidavit, that Domingo appeared to be confused about his adopted religion. The director of the Islamic Center of Reseda said Domingo only appeared at the mosque a few times, and was not well known among its members.
Schaefer said the rise of groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which understand how to use technology to recruit others around the globe almost instantaneously, have made it easier than ever for extremists to find their propaganda online. He said the group’s tactics have “completely transformed” counter-terrorism investigations.
He said ISIS were “masters of using platforms like YouTube,” to create videos that attract fellow extremists to their cause. Domingo, who according to the affidavit spoke to the FBI’s informant about ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had apparently consumed the group’s propaganda.
Schaefer said apps like WhatsApp and Kik allow users to send encrypted text messages to each other in real time from anywhere, “whether they’re on the front lines in Syria or in someone’s home bedroom in Long beach or Los Angeles.”
“That communication is basically undetectable,” he said.
Federal officials have not provided any evidence Domingo communicated with members of an extremist group overseas.
After about a two-month investigation, Domingo was arrested Friday after he allegedly supplied hundreds of nails to be put inside several improvised-explosive devices. According to the FBI, Domingo inspected the devices, then went with the undercover operative and the informant to Bluff Park in Long Beach.
That’s where a white supremacist rally was scheduled to be held on Sunday. With the two agents, Domingo inspected locations around the park to place the bombs, which were all inert.
Domingo was ordered held in federal custody without bail. He has not yet entered a plea.
An FBI spokeswoman would not identify which platform Domingo used to send messages to the undercover informant, saying doing so would jeopardize future investigations. But she said the FBI monitors dozens of other online chat rooms and message boards where users have displayed violent rhetoric.
Young described the surveillance of Domingo as he allegedly delved deeper into planning the Long Beach attack as “thorough and exhaustive.”
Despite beginning online, most of the investigation into Domingo took place in person, with the FBI’s informant attending prayer sessions with him, talking to him over dinner and taking him on drives around his neighborhood.
That level of surveillance, however, has rankled members of the Southern California Muslim community, and civil rights advocates. Both groups have questioned the FBI’s use of paid informants to perform surveillance of mosques since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
A 2006 lawsuit against the FBI over the use of an informant at the Islamic Center of Irvine was revived in February when a U.S 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judge overturned the dismissals of most of the plaintiffs’ claims.
In that case, informant Craig Monteilh posed as a Muslim for years while gathering information on the center’s members, who sued the FBI, saying they were being spied on for their religion. No terrorism-related charges were brought as a result of that operation.
Hussam Ayloush, the director for the Center for American-Islamic Relations in Los Angeles, said it was investigations like the one in Irvine that had eroded trust between the FBI and the Muslim community since 9/11.
“It’s hard to maintain trust when the relationship is based on treating Muslims as suspects until proven otherwise,” he said.
However, Ayloush said he supported investigations like the one into Domingo that targeted him because of his violent statements, and his ownership of a high-powered rifle that he could use to do harm. But he said using an informant to develop a relationship with Domingo showed a “similar pattern” to previous investigations he found troubling.
In the case of Montielh, Ayloush reported the informant to the FBI when the mosque’s members noticed his erratic behavior.
“Any person with a grain of intelligence and compassion, which is most people in the world, would not tolerate anyone causing harm to innocent people to our country and community,” he said.
Monitoring of online communities that espouse hate will continue regardless, as more and more extremist activity migrates on to the internet. Young said the FBI’s biggest fear is missing someone who they may have caught early.
“That’s the risk,” he said. “We don’t know what we may miss, but in some of these violent chat rooms they find a lot of like-minded individuals.”
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