Is there a Sacramento man in Zizians cult group linked to murders? Here’s what records show
Authorities and news outlets have reported a Sacramento man facing criminal charges in Maryland is accused of being a member of a cultlike group implicated in six deaths in three states including the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent near the Canadian border.
But 26-year-old Daniel Arthur Blank, who has been linked to the group known as the Zizians, is not from Sacramento.
Public records show he’s never listed Sacramento as a home address. Maryland court records show the home address he gave authorities after he was taken into custody Sunday is actually a private mailbox station on Rockingham Drive in Rancho Cordova.
A representative for the firm told The Sacramento Bee on Thursday that Blank had rented a “virtual” mailbox for three months last year, never having stepped foot in the business.
“He did everything online,” said the representative.
Blank had rented the box to have mail received at a physical location and sent to him electronically.
Blank, who is being held without bail in Maryland and faces misdemeanor charges of trespassing and obstructing law enforcement, is from the Bay Area. He graduated from high school in 2016 from the San Ramon Valley Unified School District in Contra Costa County.
Blank was arrested Sunday along with Jack LaSota, 34, of Berkeley and Michelle Zajko, 33, of Media, Pennsylvania. Before his arrest, Blank’s parents hadn’t seen or heard from their son since November 2022.
Blank was reported missing, and his last known contact was Dec. 15, 2022, according to a post on the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System that has since been removed from its website. His missing persons case was entered into the national database in August 2023, and his last known location was in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia.
Rebecca Francoeur-Breeden, a public defender representing Blank on Tuesday in Allegany District Court, described her client as a “brilliant young man” with serious mental health concerns and listed as a missing or endangered person before his arrest, the Altoona Mirror reported.
Blank’s parents, Nadia and Alexander Blank, told Open Vallejo their son was born in Berkeley and always excelled in school. Blank was fluent in three languages, earned straight A’s and competed in science bowl teams in middle and high school. The parents said they believe their son’s involvement with the group may be a result of brainwashing.
“He’s not a violent person,” Blank’s father told the Bay Area news outlet. “I don’t think that Daniel actually did anything really wrong except maybe being with the wrong people.”
Alexander Blank declined Wednesday to discuss his son or the criminal charges he faces in Maryland when The Sacramento Bee reached him by phone. He said they had already provided enough information, and they weren’t providing any additional interviews.
Young computer scientists
Associated Press interviews and a review of court records and online postings show the Zizians as a group of young, highly intelligent computer scientists, most of them in their 20s and 30s, met online, shared anarchist beliefs, and became increasingly violent.
The Zizians have been tied to the Jan. 20 death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland, killed in a shootout during a traffic stop in Vermont near the Canadian border, and five other homicides in Vermont, Pennsylvania and California.
Border Patrol agents had pulled over a vehicle driven by Teresa Youngblut, 21, and Felix Bauckholt was her passenger. Bauckholt, a German national, also was killed in the Jan. 20 shootout with Border Patrol agents.
Youngblut, who was reported missing by her parents in Seattle, was wounded, arrested and has since pleaded not guilty to federal firearms charges.
In November, Youngblut applied for a Washington state marriage license with Maximilian Snyder, a 22-year-old man accused of killing Curtis Lind in a Jan. 17 Solano County stabbing, according to the Vacaville Reporter. Prosecutors allege Lind, an 82-year-old landlord in Vallejo, was killed to prevent him from testifying in a murder case against his former tenants.
A few years earlier, Lind went to court to evict LaSota, Emma Borhanian and others who had been living in vans and box trucks on his Vallejo property after they failed to pay rent. The Associated Press reported that on Nov. 15, 2022, Lind was impaled by a sword in an attack during which he shot and killed Borhanian.
Solano County prosecutors determined Lind acted in self-defense, and instead charged Alexander Leatham and Suri Dao with murder in connection with Borhanian’s death.
‘Extremist group’
Allegany County State’s Attorney James Elliott has said LaSota, a blogger known as “Ziz” who uses she/her pronouns, “appears to be the leader of an extremist group known as Zizians.”
LaSota, a computer programmer and transgender woman living in the Bay Area, started writing a blog in 2016 under the online persona “Ziz” with complex and sometimes rambling theories about technology, gender identity and human cognition, the Associated Press reported.
Court records show LaSota in 2022 was declared legally dead by her family, who believed she fell into the San Francisco Bay. No body was found and an obituary was published, ABC news affiliate station KGO in San Francisco reported.
Zajko’s parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, were both shot in the head on Dec. 31, 2022, inside their Delaware County home. No arrests have been made in the murder case, but court records show Blank, who was Michelle Zajko’s roommate in Vermont, was under investigation for the double homicide, the ABC news affiliate WPVI in Pennsylvania reported.
“All of the subjects involved are to be questioned regarding other crimes that have occurred across the country,” complaint noted.
Nearly a week after the Zajkos were killed, investigators searched a Vermont home linked to their daughter, WPVI reported. Court records show Zajko is considered a person of interest in her parents’ deaths.
Blank, LaSota and Zajko were arrested Sunday in Frostburg, Maryland, after a resident reported three “suspicious” people on his property. Police said they had parked two box trucks there and asked to camp for a month.
“All of the subjects involved are to be questioned regarding other crimes that have occurred across the country,” according to the criminal complaint obtained by WPVI.
On Wednesday, Blank remained in custody at the Allegany County Jail. The judge on Tuesday ordered Blank, LaSota and Zajko to remain held without bail.
This story was originally published February 19, 2025 at 2:10 PM.
