In 2022, Joshua Colston came from Corinth, Mississippi, to Fitzgerald, Ben Hill County, to acquire a horse and “get off the grid,” according to authorities.
However, he received far more than he bargained for.
FBI agents apprehended him for illegally possessing a pistol as a convicted felon, rather than him galloping away on horseback, according to federal authorities.
However, they claim Colston was under government surveillance for engaging in an “anti-government extremist organization” that proposed a kidnapping plot against federally elected officials but never materialized.
According to a press release from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia, Colston received a four-year sentence in federal prison on Thursday for illegally carrying a firearm.
According to prosecutors, Colston participated in a debate on Zello, an encrypted voice-chat software, for a group known as “NCM,” the National Constitutional Milia.
Prosecutors claim they devised a plan to attack and kidnap federal officials on Thanksgiving Day 2022, but they never carried it out because of “the group’s lack of resources and the poor health of the members,” according to the press release.
Authorities eventually caught Colston after he traveled from Mississippi to Fitzgerald to purchase a horse, which he claimed he intended to ride throughout the United States for several years as part of a plot to go “off the grid.”
According to them, Colston had a prior conviction for theft and mischief in a Texas case, and federal law forbids criminals from owning firearms.
While in Georgia, federal officials discovered five guns: two semi-automatic pistols, a semi-automatic shotgun, a lever-action rifle, and a semi-automatic rifle reported stolen from Mississippi, according to the news release.
Prosecutors also claim he had a bulletproof vest and over 3,5000 rounds of ammunition in his hands, and the FBI suspected Colston had explosives training.
U.S. District Judge Leslie Gardner sentenced Colston to four years in prison on Thursday after he pleaded guilty in October 2023 to one count of felon in possession of a handgun.
