Bayside Neo-Nazi Extremist Pleads Guilty To Gun Charge: Feds

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — A Bayside man who glorified attacks against Jewish communities and fantasized about a "racial holy war" pleaded guilty Friday to a charge of possessing a firearm with obliterated serial numbers, federal prosecutors announced.

Joseph Miner, 30, faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for his guilty plea, prosecutors said.

Miner and a neighbor were arrested last spring attempting to buy assault rifles without serial numbers, which makes weapons virtually untraceable.

Authorities started investigating Miner in late 2019, after finding Instagram posts he'd written about "martyring" himself or "forming a well trained incel hit squad," using a term that stands for "involuntary celibate," and advocating a "racial holy war," according to prosecutors.

It was unclear whether Miner had immediate plans for a mass shooting, but he had discussed past attacks on Jewish communities online and praised the deadly stabbing at a rabbi's home in Rockland County during Hanukkah last year, calling it "exciting," according to a detention memo filed last year in Brooklyn federal court.

“I’m pretty fearless at this point I yearn for the next Cville,” he posted in 2019, in an apparent reference to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Miner also posted photos on Instagram that showed him giving Nazi salutes alongside captions that disparaged Jews, women and Black people, prosecutors said.

He and a neighbor, Daniel Jou, were arrested in May after spending more than $3,000 to buy five guns and 220 rounds of ammunition from an undercover FBI agent, according to federal court records.