A Quiet Ohio Town, a Teen’s Cellphone, and a Sprawling Federal Terrorism Investigation

DANVILLE, Ohio—On the front porch of Tycen Proper’s home in Danville, Ohio, sat an American flag pillow on a chair.

It’s not out of place in the town of just over 1,000 people.

American flags flash on the electronic billboard at the corner gas station and hang from telephone poles that line the main street. They fly in the town’s only park, next to a cannon, and above the photo tributes to military and law enforcement residents that dot lampposts throughout the main drag.

Even local bar The Hangout has an American flag above its entrance and on top of the display cooler.

Surrounded by farmland for miles, this is the small Ohio town where Proper grew up and is alleged to have conspired with an online group of anti-government Americans in an effort to pull off a mass attack at the White House’s Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event on June 14.

The local police, who responded on June 10 to a call from Proper’s mother over her concerns that his anti-government conspiracy theories could lead to violence, knew the family well. The police station is less than three-tenths of a mile from the home where Proper lived with his parents.

Proper’s father, Adam, told The Epoch Times the family wasn’t ready to give interviews yet. The town’s residents are reluctant to talk about him on the record. It’s a town, one bartender said, where rumors live forever.

Others are angry over the negative publicity brought upon their town by out-of-town reporters.

“No one cared when our cop got killed,” said one middle-aged Danville woman who was standing outside a convenience store. “But this kid …”

In January 2016, Officer Thomas Cottrell was gunned down by Herschel Jones III, who was looking to kill a police officer that day. A plaque honoring Cottrell that reads “Heroes Live Forever In Our Hearts” is mounted on the wall outside the entrance to the police station.

This is a town that proudly displays its patriotism, its support for law enforcement and the military, and its love for the high school football team. Now, it’s the center of a federal investigation into a conspiracy to overthrow the government.

A year earlier, Proper had threatened suicide to a local pastor, according to a Danville police report obtained by The Epoch Times. When his mother became alarmed by his increasingly extreme anti-government rhetoric in June, the family contacted police.

In the hands of law enforcement, Proper’s phone became a thread that unwound an alleged multistate anti-government conspiracy to trigger what one conspirator hoped would be an American revolution.

Federal authorities have now charged eight men from six states in connection with the alleged plot to attack the UFC event on the White House grounds.

The defendants are Proper, 19; Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, 31, of Omaha, Nebraska; Daniel K. Eskridge, 32, of Hamilton, Missouri; Bryan Omar Roa, 25, of Calimesa, California; Michael Alan Thomas, 32, of Pinon Hills, California; William Lee Spartacus Falkner, 21, of Belfair, Washington; Jordan W. Rincker, 28, of St. Joseph, Missouri; and Chandler Scaggs, 21, of Chapmanville, West Virginia.

All face federal conspiracy charges related to the alleged plot. Proper is also charged with attempted murder of a federal officer, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, and receiving or transferring a firearm for use in a felony, according to court records.

The Grand Revolution

The criminal complaints filed by the U.S. Department of Justice paint a portrait of a group of men who had grandiose plans to start a revolution but lacked the logistics to carry it out in any realistic manner.

What investigators found on Proper’s cellphone transformed the case from a local mental health call into a sprawling federal terrorism investigation. The encrypted chats, organizational plans, and conversations stored on Proper’s device led investigators to an alleged network whose members were discussing a revolution to topple the American government.

The chats on Proper’s phone showed that the hierarchy of the online group went beyond a single attack.

Thomas told the group: “What we need is skilled operators to work like ghosts. Most missions that expect contact will be infiltration missions. And that won’t be for a while. There’s a lot we can do before we fight toe to toe.”

Eskridge stated that soon, millions would join their movement.

He thought that half the military would join their cause and not follow “unlawful orders” and that there was the potential for 3 percent of the population to stand with their group.

“I believe we are at the ‘trigger event’ point. Meaning to set this off we need an event or events that cause people to realize the revolution has officially begun,” Eskridge said.

The Plan

The ultimate goal of the attack, according to Thomas, was to create enough chaos to overthrow the American government.

The DOJ’s criminal complaints reveal an ambitious plan to launch an attack on the White House grounds on June 14 during the UFC event, complete with drones loaded with explosives and teams of snipers. The details of the investigation question whether the group could have actually pulled it off.

The operation would have involved five teams of three people each: a sniper, a Tier 1 operator as support, and a drone operator.

Falkner spoke of the importance of keeping conversations about planning the attack secretive. In one post, he talked about how the government could track conversations online via cookies and IP addresses.

“If they knew what I was up to I’d be in a cell [right now],” Falkner wrote. “Intent to commit a crime is still a crime.”

He continued: “Well this ain’t gonna be a false flag like the last 10 attempts on his life. Every week now we hear some guy went over there alone with a gun and gets shot. I don’t get what’s so hard about just flying a few drones and getting some help to do so.”

Thomas celebrated the carnage the group hoped to unleash.

“It’s gonna be a [expletive] bloodbath,” Thomas wrote, adding a heartface emoji after his statement. “And broadcast live tv [sic].”

Recruitment and Structure

Members were vetted through videos, physical training, and equipment purchases. Trusted members moved to encrypted platforms including Signal and SimpleX. Larger groups were divided into smaller operational cells.

Thomas allegedly wrote that the movement would be divided into four “tiers” that would cover everything from “gorilla style [sic] warfare,” to recruiters, to social media influencers, fundraisers, and a media outreach team.

Tier 1 members would be involved in the combat and would receive food, transportation, safe locations, and support if they became fugitives. He also discussed plans to “break them out of jail” if needed.

Investigators found a large chat of roughly 19 participants along with smaller, role-based planning groups.

Eskridge said he had “no official combat or tactical training” but had been “running battle drills” with a local group.

Investigators identified Eskridge as second-in-command of the online group, with Alvarez as the leader. Proper was identified as being at the bottom of the leadership hierarchy as a “team leader.”

The Motive

According to a police report released to The Epoch Times by the Danville Police Department, Proper had told his parents that he hated the government because they were evil and Satan worshippers. He also told his parents his online group were planning “missions” to deal with the evil government.

The contents of Proper’s phone provided investigators with additional insight into what motivated the alleged conspirators.

“When the laws are no longer written and enforced by criminals that’s when I give a [expletive] about following them. What we are doing is not only our birthright but also our duty as Americans,” Eskridge wrote. 

“What we do here will reverberate around the world and will echo throughout history.”

Thomas warned group members, “Consider yourself an enemy of the state.”

Stan Kephart, a retired police chief who served as a security administrator for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, said the FBI has to take this threat seriously even though it lacked funding.

“You have motivation and intent,” Kephart told The Epoch Times. “You can’t dismiss it. … These people are still dangerous.”

Lack of Funding

The discussion online by the group of conspirators led to a discussion of needing money to get the drones and the explosives. One conspirator asked how much was needed.

Thomas said $800 and added: “I’m flat broke. I can pay in manpower though I bet you could come up with $100 in a week somehow. Maybe just hold a sign by the freeway saying, ‘fund the freedom fighters.’”

During chats about escape plans after the attack, Alvarez wrote: “Our evacuation options are too pricy [sic] with our current assets, I can get the 15k, but it will take time. Not enough. So we need another out.”

Roa had car mechanical issues during the week he was to travel to Washington.

Kephart said the lack of funding undermined the attack.

“That’s the first and most important thing,” he said. “You can’t do anything unless you can get your crew there.”

Could the Attack Have Succeeded?

Kephart pointed to the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania as an example of how even one person can succeed in an attack if law enforcement doesn’t do its job properly.

A recent report by the Department of Homeland Security detailed how the U.S. Secret Service missed multiple opportunities to detect, prevent, and disrupt the attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024.

Doug Kouns, a security expert with Veracity IIR and a former special agent and supervisory special agent with the FBI, said people don’t realize how much security is involved with an event at the White House.

Kouns said there are anti-drone measures in place for such high-profile events as the UFC event.

“Anything that gets in the air out there is going to get noticed almost immediately and dealt with,” he said. “There is literally no chance a drone gets near that event.”

He said snipers would not be able to get close enough without being discovered and would never get close to a vantage point where they could shoot.