A Roanoke man could spend 20 years in prison after pleading guilty in federal court to uploading an instruction video to the internet designed to help ISIS make bombs.
On Thursday, Romeo Langhorne, pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support and resources to the foreign terrorist organization.
The 31-year-old who also lives in St. Augustine, Florida, pledged his allegiance to the group sometime in 2014, according to the US Department of Justice.
Throughout 2018 and 2019, Langhorne reaffirmed his support for ISIS on different social media accounts, posted ISIS-produced videos to his YouTube account and participated in online chat rooms with like-minded individuals, according to the Department of Justice.
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In December 2018 and January 2019, Langhorne expressed in one of those chats an interest in creating a video that would improve on existing videos demonstrating the making and use of a deadly explosive – triacetone triperoxide, also known as TATP.
A month later, in February 2019, he began communicating with an undercover FBI employee who was posing as someone working on behalf of ISIS, according to Karin Hoppmann, the Acting United States Attorney for the Middle District of Florida.
Langhorne told that person about his plans to make an instructional video about TATP and asked for the person’s help.
He also told the FBI employee that, “his true purpose in making and distributing the video was to arm ISIS adherents and others with knowledge of how to make TATP and use it for terrorism-related purposes in support of ISIS,” according to the news release announcing his plea.
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While the FBI did make a video in accordance with his instructions, unknown to Langhorne, the Bureau’s video featured an inert chemical formula for TATP that would not produce an explosion.
Then, in November 2019, the FBI employee provided versions of the TATP video to Langhorne, which he then uploaded to a video-sharing website.
That month, he was arrested in Roanoke and Langhorne later admitted that he was the person who had communicated with the FBI employee and that he had uploaded the TATP video to the internet, according to Hoppmann.