Overview
- The sentencing occurred Tuesday when U.S. District Judge David C. Nye gave 21-year-old Alexander Scott Mercurio an 18-year federal prison term followed by lifetime supervised release for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State.
- Mercurio pleaded guilty last month to the single federal terrorism charge of attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.
- Court records show investigators found detailed operational planning for attacks on churches in Coeur d’Alene, including a recorded pledge to ISIS, a photo with an IS flag, plans to seize his father’s firearms by incapacitating him, and a stated intent to "rinse and repeat" attacks on multiple houses of worship.
- The probe began with a 2021 cryptocurrency investigation and used undercover FBI informants and an online covert employee who engaged Mercurio from 2022 through early 2024 before agents executed a search warrant and arrested him on April 6, 2024, one day before the planned attack.
- Defense filings say Mercurio was a depressed, isolated youth exposed to multiple extremist influences, that he has renounced those views and been assessed as low risk, while prosecutors and federal officials portray the case as a counterterrorism success and a model for using material-support laws to stop domestic plots.