(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Last August, Detroit man Jibreel Pratt was arrested for allegedly purchasing stolen bank-account info on an illicit online marketplace named Genesis Market—which the FBI had been investigating via online undercover employees and other methods since 2018.
When the FBI searched Pratt’s home last August, they claim to have found an AR-style semiautomatic rifle and handgun, a tactical gas mask and boots, and goodbye letters to his family. It turned out, Pratt had been talking to FBI informants since at least February 2023, pledging his support for ISIS.
But instead of hitting Pratt with terrorism-related charges when they arrested him for fraud last August, authorities released him on bail. Pratt then continued to talk to the FBI informants online for another roughly nine months before he was arrested again this week.
“While on this Court’s bond and federal supervision for his cyber case, Pratt quickly reached out to the ISIS source [an FBI informant] and told the ISIS source (emphasis in the original) to “DELETE EVERYTHING” and plotted to jump bond and flee the country,” a Justice Department lawyer said in a Tuesday motion to revoke Pratt’s bail.
“Pratt vowed that, since his arrest, his ‘drive and determination has not lowered but increased’ and that he wanted to ‘grow’ ISIS to even ‘bigger heights’ than when it had unleashed savage tyranny across the Middle East.”
In December, Pratt contacted another online FBI persona that he believed to be a separate ISIS member, again expressing his desire for jihad, according to the DOJ.
“As recently as March 2024, Pratt asked the Second ISIS source to help him leave America without a passport because Pratt ‘need[s]’ to ‘make hijrah’ and ‘come to my state,’” the DOJ said in its motion for detention.
Unlike the slew of teenagers the FBI has arrested over the last year for talking to informants posing as ISIS members, Pratt appears to be a sophisticated criminal.
The DOJ noted that he had sporadic employment over the last few years, but was still able to accumulate several firearms, ammunition, combat gear, an apartment, and computer equipment. And his cellphone showed that he had somehow accumulated over $102,000 in Bitcoin, according to the DOJ.
Pratt is currently detained, and has a detention hearing on Wednesday.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
