New details emerge on alleged white supremacist ‘Terrorgram’ leader based in Sacramento area

By all available accounts, Dallas Humber barely socialized with her Elk Grove community — she didn’t own a home, raise kids or work a salaried job.

But on the vast internet, Humber tapped into a nearly unlimited global network to attempt to solicit assassinations of U.S. government leaders and encourage white supremacists to unleash terror attacks upon minorities, authorities said. The 34-year-old was indicted Monday after federal prosecutors said she helped lead a chat on messaging app Telegram that provided detailed instructions on how to create bombs and created an list of assassination targets including a senator, federal judge, state officials and more.

A court document filed Tuesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento, arguing for her continued detention, revealed more information about Humber’s background and arrest last week.

Among the new details noted by prosecutors: that Humber was found with a trove of firearms, some of them 3D-printed; that she was an ex-fugitive chased by police two years ago; and that she has corresponded with a white supremacist mass shooter who murdered nine people at a South Carolina church.

Humber pleaded not guilty Monday to 15 charges related to overseeing a group named “The Terrorgram Collective.” Humber and her co-defendant, 37-year-old Matthew Robert Allison, of Boise, Idaho, are accused of encouraging violence against U.S. officials and spreading white supremacist ideology consumed by followers, some of whom went on to commit terrorist attacks overseas. The United Kingdom designated “The Terrorgram Collective” as a terrorist organization in April.

Humber remains in custody at the downtown Sacramento County Main Jail on a federal hold after she was arrested by local law enforcement Friday.

“The defendants’ goal, the indictment charges, was to ignite a race war, accelerate the collapse of what they viewed as an irreparably corrupt government and bring about a white ethnostate,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke, of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, during an online news conference Monday.

Humber’s federal public defender, Noa Oren, declined to comment Monday because she has not received the full discovery in the court case.

Prosecutors on Monday referred to Humber as an Elk Grove resident. The Huffington Post, which first reported on Humber’s identity as an alleged “Terrorgram” leader in March 2023, said she wrote in online forums that Elk Grove was her home town and that she attended Laguna Creek High School.

She has spent most of her time in California, but has not cultivated “strong roots” in the capital region, prosecutors wrote. Humber also expressed wanting to move to Idaho, according to the court filing.

“Many members of the Terrorgram Collective have access to guns and live within driving distance of Defendants Humber and Allison,” prosecutors wrote.

When Humber was arrested Friday, federal authorities found domestic terrorist patches, Nazi paraphernalia, 3D printed firearms, 3D printers, ammunition, trigger extenders, SIM cards and flash drives, according to the court filing.

Humber is in touch with her parents but does not have her own family, and she works an “unsalaried job,” according to the federal court filing.

It appears Humber may have been married at one point. Humber said in a June 2022 Terrorgram Collective post that she and her husband “caught our first case together a few months after we started dating,” and were involved in a high-speed chase with police, prosecutors said.

They were fugitives for a month, the court filing said.

The court document did not specify where exactly Humber was arrested, nor did the Justice Department on Monday. Public records list Humber’s most recent address as a home in Elk Grove.

Humber appears to have dedicated her life to spreading the white supremacist ideology. She called white supremacist Brandon Russell while he was in custody and vowed to never quit their worldview, the court filing said.

“It’s a lifelong commitment,” Humber said, according to prosecutors.

Russell, a member of a neo-Nazi group called Atomwaffen, was sentenced in 2018 to five years in prison for possessing an unregistered destructive device and for unlawfully storing explosive material while living in Tampa. He was also indicted last year in connection to plotting to attack electric substations in Baltimore.

Even Telegram banned Humber and Allison’s accounts, channels and chats for posting extremist content, but they continued to create new ones. Both employed “sophisticated technologies” to hide their true location and frequently changed account names, the court filing said.

It also appears Sacramento County law enforcement was unaware of the apparent threat posed by Humber until the 2023 story by the Huffington Post.

“We were unaware of this issue until you presented it to us in this email,” Sgt. Amar Gandhi, a spokesman for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, emailed the Huffington Post when presented with its findings. “I have forwarded this information to our Gang Suppression Unit, which investigates all bias-based crimes.”

Authorities, while executing a search warrant where Humber stored her belongings, also found a printed copy of a white supremacist publication created by Humber called “The Hard Reset,” an AR-15 assault rifle, a short-barreled rifle, materials for 3D printing firearms, high-capacity magazines, unregistered handguns and a notebook listing white supremacist attackers. She stored her 3D-printed weapons at the residence of a family member residence who “lawfully owns firearms” accessible to Humber, prosecutors said.

“Defendant Humber had more firearms and ammunition than a law-abiding citizen would need for hunting or self-defense,” the court filing states. Federal authorities are still investigating whether those weapons were legally possessed.

Humber also corresponded with Dylann Roof, the 30-year-old who murdered nine churchgoers of a South Carolina Black congregation at a church in Charleston, according to the court filing. Roof was convicted in federal court for the 2015 mass shooting and is awaiting execution on death row.

And Humber, according to court documents, has told other followers of the Terrorgram Collective what to do if she was arrested: “ambush” federal agents.

This story was originally published September 10, 2024 at 5:55 PM.