Cameron Shea

Cameron Brandon Shea, operating online under the alias "Krokodil," served as Atomwaffen Division's primary national recruiter and co-organized "Operation Erste Saule" (Operation First Pillar) alongside AWD's Washington State chapter leader Kaleb Cole. The operation involved identifying journalists and advocates who had reported on or tracked antisemitism and white nationalism, then delivering threatening posters featuring Nazi imagery to their homes and workplaces. Shea pleaded guilty on April 7, 2021, to two federal counts and was sentenced to 36 months (three years) in federal prison on August 25, 2021, by U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour in the Western District of Washington.¹

National Recruitment Operations

Shea served as AWD's principal national recruiter, operating from Redmond, Washington and recruiting members across multiple states through encrypted messaging applications and AWD's online presence. His recruitment work made him one of the most organizationally significant AWD members outside its Texas-based leadership structure, which was centered on AWD's propaganda chief John Cameron Denton and founder Brandon Russell.

His co-organization of Operation Erste Saule with Cole placed both of them at the center of AWD's harassment campaign against journalists and civil rights organizations, connecting his Washington-based recruiting operation to the national intimidation strategy.

Operation Erste Saule

Operation Erste Saule targeted journalists who had written about AWD and organizations including the ADL that had monitored AWD's activities. The campaign involved researching targets' home and workplace addresses and delivering threatening printed posters, which depicted masked figures with guns and Molotov cocktails alongside neo-Nazi imagery, to those locations across multiple states.

The operation ran alongside John Cameron Denton's separate swatting campaign, which targeted a different set of individuals through false emergency reports, representing two concurrent AWD harassment strategies operating in 2018-2019. The two campaigns were prosecuted separately: Shea and Cole in the Western District of Washington, and Denton in the Eastern District of Virginia.²

Guilty Plea and Sentencing

Shea pleaded guilty on April 7, 2021, to two counts: (1) conspiracy to commit three federal offenses (interference with federally-protected activities because of religion, mailing threatening communications, and cyberstalking) and (2) interference with a federally protected activity because of religion. On August 25, 2021, Judge John C. Coughenour sentenced him to 36 months in federal prison.

The 36-month sentence compared to Kaleb Cole's sentence for the same operation in the same court and to Denton's 41-month sentence in the EDVA for the parallel swatting conspiracy.¹