BAY CITY, Mich. — John Douglas Allen was sentenced on Wednesday to 75 months in prison for his 2021 domestic terrorism campaign against telecommunications companies he blamed for “broadcasting pornography, cursing and immoral content.”
The 76-year-old Allen, described in the press as “a retired miner,” was arrested by the FBI in September 2021 following an investigation into his activities, which included threats of violence and planting bombs.
Federal prosecutors charged Allen with “extortion and attempting to destroy a building and accused him of leaving pipe bombs and threatening letters in locations across northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula,” the Detroit News reported at the time.
As XBIZ reported, Allen admitted his guilt during a hearing in July, pleading guilty to two counts of attempted destruction of a building and one count of attempted interference with commerce by extortion. He appeared on Wednesday before District Judge Thomas L. Ludington for sentencing.
Anti-Porn Stance at the Core of Allen's Defense
Allen’s defense attorney, Stevens J. Jacobs, wrote a sentencing memorandum emphasizing that the convicted anti-porn domestic terrorist “had no criminal history and has a litany of health issues,” local news site MLive reported yesterday.
Jacobs admitted that Allen “created threatening letters and bombs because he was dissatisfied with all the immoral content, including pornography, on phones and cable television. He acted alone and does not understand why he made those threats and demands when he knew he couldn’t actually stop pornography.”
Allen admitted to careful and long-standing premeditation on his terrorist acts, telling FBI agents that he “bought the bombs’ components about a year prior at various hardware stores” and “spent a year building up his courage to place the destructive devices,” MLive reported.
Allen’s terror campaign, the site reported, resulted in a costly manhunt that engaged special agents, intelligence analysts, troopers, deputies and officers from the FBI, Michigan State Police, Cheboygan County Sheriff’s Office, Cheboygan Police Department, Sault Ste. Marie Police Department, Sault Ste. Marie Tribal Police, the U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service, U.S. Border Patrol and ATF.
Allen’s arrest came only a few months after the Atlanta massage parlor massacres in May 2021. The man indicted for those murders, Robert Aaron Long, stated that his motive was his perceived “sex addiction,” which his family had tried to treat at religious “re-education centers” that preach shame-based sexual concepts. Long told the police he murdered the massage parlor employees because he wanted to “eliminate the temptation” and he added that at the time he was arrested he was actually heading to Florida to inflict more violence on “pornography sets.”
A Long-Term Plan of Domestic Terrorism Against 'Pornography'
As part of his plea agreement, Allen admitted that on Aug. 24, 2021 he “drove a van bearing a California license plate from his Iosco County home north into the Upper Peninsula. He then placed polka-dot envelopes containing threatening letters on at least three cellphone towers.”
The letters demanded that “immoral content” such as pornography “no longer be on the internet.” Allen signed the bizarre letters as being from a supposed anti-porn group called “Coalition for Moral Communications,” which the letters claimed the group had members in 27 states, and addressed them to “AT&T, Verizon, and all other carriers.”
Allen also demanded the telecom giants pay $5 million, with instructions forthcoming in future letters, or else he would destroy the companies’ cell towers.
The plea included Allen’s admission that “in furtherance of this threatened extortion,” he made two crude pipe bombs at his home.
“They were fully functional and contained shrapnel,” the plea agreement admitted.
On Sept. 15, Allen “drove his van — again, with the California license plate — to Sault Ste. Marie. Around 7:30 p.m., he placed one of his makeshift bombs at an AT&T store within the city,” Michigan Live reported. “He then headed back south over the Mackinac Bridge and about 10:10 p.m. placed his second bomb in front of a Verizon store in Cheboygan.”
Both bombs “were placed in cardboard United States Postal Service boxes that had ‘CMT’ written on them and contained handcuffs. Both boxes also bore writing indicating this was the ‘last warning’ and that the next incident would be during business hours.”
As XBIZ reported, Allen told agents upon his arrest on Sept. 20, 2021 that “he had penned three or four letters, signed them as the Coalition for Moral Telecommunications, and left them at cell towers in the Upper Peninsula,” Michigan Live reported in July.
A Lenient Sentence From a Michigan Judge
The “attempted destruction of a building” charge carries a five-year minimum sentence that can be extended up to 20 years, while the extortion charge is “a 20-year felony,” MLive reported. In addition, Eastern District of Michigan U.S. Attorney Dawn N. Ison noted at the July plea hearing that “the actions of this defendant could have resulted in significant bodily harm or death to citizens in the area” and prosecutors recommended Allen “serve his eventual sentences concurrently.”
District Judge Thomas L. Ludington, however, sentenced Allen to only six years and three months in prison.