The defendants reside in Washington, California, Nevada, Michigan and British Columbia.
Attorneys listed for 15 of the 23 defendants didn’t instantly reply to requests for touch upon Tuesday, whereas one other three declined to remark. 4 of the defendants had been nonetheless at massive. Details about the remaining defendant’s lawyer was not listed in court docket data.
The U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace for the Jap District of Washington declined to remark additional on the case on Tuesday, together with to say how the defendants had been initially linked to at least one one other.
In response to the indictment, one of many defendants had mentioned bringing a false misconduct grievance in opposition to the F.B.I. agent investigating the case. As a part of that false narrative, the authorities stated, that defendant would declare to the F.B.I. that his household was being threatened by the Mahdi Military, a militia group in Iraq.
In complete, the group staged about 14 collisions, the indictment stated. In certainly one of them, the authorities stated, one of many defendants deliberately drove a Toyota Sienna minivan into an Infiniti FX35, a crossover S.U.V. carrying a number of different defendants, together with the driving force, close to an intersection in Franklin County in southeastern Washington in January 2019.
The minivan’s driver had boasted to the F.B.I. informant concerning the fraud scheme, investigators stated.
“I did the insurance coverage within the day and I hit it at evening,” he stated, in line with the indictment.
In one other collision, involving a Jeep Grand Cherokee and a Chevrolet Traverse in September 2019 in Pasco, Wash., a metropolis within the southeastern a part of the state, two of the defendants used hammers to inflict extra harm to the Jeep earlier than the police arrived, the authorities stated.
In April 2020, investigators stated, one of many defendants rammed a Chevy Malibu thrice right into a second Chevy Malibu at an intersection in Kennewick, Wash.