A far-right white supremacist group has filed a lawsuit against a Washington man they accused of harassment and sharing sensitive information, which resulted in members losing their jobs.
The lawsuit obtained by Atlanta Black was filed against David Alan Capito II, an activist also referred to as Vyacheslav Arkhangelskiy. It alleges that he infiltrated the group “using a false identity and later gained unauthorized access to confidential information…from Patriot Front’s computer databases.”
As The Seattle Times reported, Capito is a 37-year-old who was a member of a far-left militant group, Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club.
Patriot Front is labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are linked to vandalizing public displays that honor police brutality victims, the LGBTQ community, and Black culture. They are also known for executing unannounced demonstrations nationwide and touting racist propaganda, per a timeline posted by SPLC.
The lawsuit alleges that Capito led a doxing campaign and exposed the identities of the group’s members, which in turn caused them “serious harm, including loss of their jobs.”
For instance, according to the court document, one of the plaintiffs, identified as Paul Gancarz, claims that he lost his six-figure civil engineering job due to Capito’s actions. Other plaintiffs — Daniel Turetchi, Colton Brown, and James Johnson — say they were terminated from their real estate brokerage, electrician, and HVAC technician jobs. The lawsuit claims Johnson’s wife was also booted from her $60,000-a-year gig.
Per the lawsuit, Capito joined the group using the alias “Vincent Washington” in the summer of 2021. He served as a photographer for local events in the Pacific Northwest. However, the complaint says he used his role as an opportunity to take pictures of license plates as well as secretly record members using cameras and microphones.
Additionally, Capito is accused of working with Distributed Denial of Secrets around November 2021. The lawsuit dubs DDOS as a hacking organization that targets “right-wing websites.”
“Specifically, Capito used his access to the Patriot Front server to execute a session hijack attack, a sophisticated type of cyber attack which grants the attacker administrator-level privileges to information stored on the target server which he would not have otherwise had access to,” the lawsuit said. “In an attempt to distract from this attack and ensure its success, Capito also conducted a simultaneous denial of service attack against Patriot Front’s website.”
According to the court documents, Capito used his privileges to download information from the group’s confidential chats, which were eventually posted on the DDOS website. The group’s security team removed his access in December 2021. It alleges that he also “harassed” the members by slashing their tires and hanging flyers in their neighborhoods.
The lawsuit requests legal-related fees, punitive or exemplary damages, barring Capito from further using their information, documents say.
