Anarchist Arnie Lerma

On March 16, 2018, Arnie Lerma took his own life after shooting his wife Ginger Sugerman in the face, his solution to oxycodone addiction and the inevitable prison term he faced for stealing money from her.

Lerma was a conspiracy theorists on the fringes of the internet. He aligned himself with everything from Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis to the cyberterrorist group Anonymous.

His history included attacking religions on the internet, harassing and intimidating Church of Scientology parishioners with hate mail, and planning and participating in antireligious demonstrations that often became violent. He also ran a private underground channel on the internet where antireligious extremists still gather to spread hatred and plan acts of aggression against the Church of Scientology and its parishioners.

Convicted Copyright Infringer

In the 1990s, Lerma, a known copyright anarchist, was the subject of two judgments for copyright infringement.

In August 1995, Lerma posted copies of stolen copyrighted Church Scripture on the internet. The Church filed suit for copyright infringement and the court authorized a search of his home. Lerma’s computer and 58 disks were seized by federal marshals.

On April 28, 1997, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia held that Lerma had violated the copyrights of L. Ron Hubbard’s works on the Scientology religion and entered a permanent injunction against him. The court also awarded damages and costs.

Lerma was also a director of FACTNet, an anti-Scientology online database. FACTNet was also sued for copyright infringement for misappropriating more than 2,000 copyrighted works of L. Ron Hubbard. FactNet was permanently enjoined from further infringement and assessed a judgment of $1 million for any violation of the injunction.

Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists and Anarchists

Lerma’s fanaticism led him to Holocaust denier Willis Carto and his Liberty Lobby, where Lerma served on the Board of Policy. Yaron Svoray of the Simon Wiesenthal Center called Carto “the most notorious Nazi in the world.”

Lerma’s appearance as a featured panelist at Liberty Lobby’s 40th anniversary convention was reported in Liberty Lobby’s Spotlight on September 18, 1995.

Lerma tried to cover up his connection to Carto and his racist organization, as evidenced by this excerpt from an email Lerma sent to an associate:

“I was asked to speak at the 40th anniversary convention of Liberty Lobby… I suggest that we don’t promote my relationship with Willis Carto … We have the full support of Willis Carto….”

Lerma had a long history of involvement in antigovernment militia groups and was a regular contributor to the alt.conspiracy newsgroup. Among the most notorious of his militia connections was William White, the onetime public relations mouthpiece of the Utopian Anarchist Party (UAP) that targets government and law enforcement agencies. Described in his own bio as a neo-Nazi, White participated with Lerma in hate demonstrations against the Church of Scientology.

White was arrested for threats to a federal juror in 2008, found guilty on four counts in 2009 and imprisoned. He was released in 2011 when the conviction was overturned; the prosecution appealed the decision and White fled the country. He was later arrested in Mexico.

In March 2005, after the murder of the husband and mother of a federal judge who had ordered a white supremacist group to stop using the name “World Church of the Creator,” White wrote on his website, “I don’t feel bad that Judge Letkow’s family was murdered. In fact, when I heard the story I laughed.”

Anti-religious Deprogrammer

Lerma became an advocate for the revival of the practice of “deprogramming” that attempts to forcibly pressure members of religious movements to denounce their faith. Deprogramming often involves kidnapping, assault, holding the person against their will and subjecting them to food and sleep deprivation until they “break” and recant their religion.

The practice largely stopped after several criminal convictions of deprogrammers for kidnapping and multimillion-dollar judgments against deprogramming groups such as the Cult Awareness Network.

However, deprogramming fit neatly with Lerma’s penchant for violence.

In 2005, Lerma worked with deprogrammer to deprogram a staff member from the Church of Scientology in San Francisco. At the time, Lerma was associating with another deprogrammer, Hana Whitfield, a South African woman who had conspired to murder her own father, then fled to the United States.

Viewing himself in the role of the priest in the movie The Exorcist, Lerma refused to let the young man being deprogrammed go and put him through several days of intense abuse in an effort to force him to “shake off that evil.”

“The excitement was intense and I enjoyed playing the part of Father Flanagan,” Lerma later wrote after the young man had cracked from days of badgering and harassment.

Supporter of the Cyberterrorist Hate Group Anonymous

In 2008, Lerma became a supporter of the cyberterrorist group Anonymous and participated in their hate marches. Anonymous members have been arrested and convicted of crimes against Scientology Churches, crimes ranging from vandalism to felonies related to hacking the Church’s computer systems.

The group has a long history of attacking government agencies, major corporations, nonprofit institutions and churches, including Churches of Scientology, the Church’s ecclesiastical leadership and other officials of the Church. In a chilling threat posted on the internet, the group stated: “This will be the world’s biggest terrorist attack on a religion. Lives will be lost... His execution [referring to the President CSI] along with the deaths of other countless Scientologists will strike fear into the hearts of every member….”

Anonymous made numerous assassination threats, bomb threats, arson threats, and death threats targeting Scientology Churches all over the United States, in the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries, some of which were carried out. These included:

• Bomb threats made over a period of months.
• Letters purportedly containing anthrax sent to more than 20 Churches in Southern California, prompting the FBI, Secret Service and the Joint Terrorist Task Force in Los Angeles to investigate.
• More than 40 incidents of vandalism against Churches of Scientology, including an arson attempt in Los Angeles.
• Sending more than 3.6 million harassing e-mails and 141 million malicious hits against the Church’s websites as part of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) which severed the Church’s primary line of information to members and non-members for several days.

Law enforcement agencies intervened, Churches were evacuated during religious services and Church convocations interrupted or put in jeopardy.

Members of Anonymous were arrested and prosecuted in connection with DDOS attacks, including two federal prosecutions which resulted in felony charges and sentencing to a year in a federal penitentiary.

In June 2008, Lerma joined an Anonymous hate march in Washington, D.C., parking his pickup truck emblazoned with hateful anti-religious slogans, directly in front of the Washington D.C. Church.

Lerma lauded Anonymous to the media, describing the masked supporters of the hate group as “disciplined, polite, intelligent, organized” and adding “I was blown away.”

Anonymous’ hate campaign continued to spark violence and attacks on Churches of Scientology around the world for several years. In alignment with his own extremist mindset, Lerma continued to support the group in its attacks on Scientology.

Attempted Murderer

Over the years, Lerma grew increasingly irrational, becoming addicted to a dangerous mix of ideological extremism, firearms and oxycodone.

By 2018, Lerma’s obsessions with conspiracy theories were ultimately his undoing. Addicted to opioids and facing an impending divorce and potential criminal prosecution for stealing $72,000 from his wife, he went over the edge. According to reports, on March 15, 2018, following an extreme incident, Lerma’s wife contacted police and begged them, to no avail, to take his weapons from him.

Late the next day, Lerma shot his wife in the face. She sustained serious injuries but managed to escape and called police. In the early hours of March 17, police entered the residence and found Lerma dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The Sylvania Georgia Police Department’s incident report of the events of March 16, 2018, completes the picture:

“I responded to a 911 dispatch to 308 Holly Rd. in reference to a white female with a gunshot to the head. Upon arrival I made contact with the home owner, [REDACTED] who was walking with the victim, Ginger Sugerman, down his driveway toward me and my partner, Ofc. Bennett. Mrs. Sugerman had a gunshot wound to her mouth and was in shock, but was able to state that she had been shot by her husband, Arnaldo Lerma… After repeated attempts to make contact with Lerma at the front door to 314 and finding the door not secured we made entry and found Lerma in the first floor bathroom deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.”

The autopsy confirmed the suicide. Oxycodone was found in his system.