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LOS ANGELES (AP) — An Army veteran who plotted to bomb a white supremacist rally in Southern California was convicted Wednesday of federal charges that could send him to prison for life.
A jury found Mark Steven Domingo, 28, guilty of providing material support to terrorism and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, the U.S. attorney’s office said. He is scheduled for sentencing Nov. 1.
Domingo schemed to bomb a planned April 2019 rally in Long Beach before he was arrested, prosecutors said.
Domingo, a former combat infantryman, had recently converted to Islam and over several months discussed several plots to kill scores of people in Southern California in revenge for the March 2019 attacks on two New Zealand mosques that left 50 people dead, prosecutors said.
Domingo posted one online message saying “America needs another Vegas event,” an apparent reference to the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 59 people, documents show. He said it would spark civil unrest to weaken “America by giving them a taste of the terror they gladly spread all over the world.”
The terror plot was foiled by the FBI and police using an undercover officer and informant Domingo thought were his accomplices.
Military records show Domingo served about 16 months in the Army, including a four-month stint in Afghanistan in fall 2012. A U.S. official told The Associated Press in 2019 that Domingo was demoted and discharged before completing his enlistment contract for committing an unspecified serious offense.
He left with a rank of private, the lowest possible grade.