A federal grand jury in Maryland has indicted
Jack LaSota, the namesake of a
cult-like fringe group with ties to the Bay Area, whose adherents have been linked to half a dozen deaths across the country.
The former Vallejo resident was charged Wednesday with one count of possessing firearms and ammunition as a fugitive. LaSota has two outstanding warrants after failing to appear in separate criminal trials in
Sonoma County and
Pennsylvania. She was
arrested in Maryland in February on several misdemeanor firearm, trespassing, and obstruction charges and is currently being held without bail in Allegany County, according to public records.
Attorneys for LaSota were not immediately available for comment.
Federal prosecutors allege that LaSota possessed a
.50-caliber sniper rifle, a
handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition at the time of her arrest, according to the indictment. If convicted, she could face up to 15 years in federal prison, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release. Two other individuals,
Michelle Zajko and
Daniel Blank, were arrested with LaSota in Maryland, but do not appear to be facing federal charges.
LaSota gained international notoriety after the
killing of
Vallejo landlord Curtis Lind earlier this year, which authorities have linked to several violent incidents across the country. Solano County prosecutors have charged 23-year-old
Maximilian Snyder with Lind’s murder. In November,
Snyder filed for a marriage license with an individual charged in the
killing of a border patrol agent in Vermont just days after Lind’s death. A gun used in that shooting was
allegedly bought by a person of interest in the double-homicide of Zajko’s parents in Pennsylvania on Dec. 31, 2022.
Called “Zizians” by their critics, the group is largely made up of young, highly educated individuals with backgrounds in math and computer science. They appear to follow an ideological offshoot of Rationalist philosophy described by LaSota in online forums and blog posts. Their core beliefs include staunch veganism, fears over artificial intelligence, and a belief that people have more than one consciousness because they have two brain hemispheres. Individuals associated with the Zizians have been linked to at least six deaths in California, Pennsylvania and Vermont.