{"id":1082675,"date":"2023-01-04T17:10:30","date_gmt":"2023-01-04T22:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/two-charged-in-christmas-day-attacks-on-washington-power-grid\/1082675\/"},"modified":"2023-01-04T17:10:30","modified_gmt":"2023-01-04T22:10:30","slug":"two-charged-in-christmas-day-attacks-on-washington-power-grid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/two-charged-in-christmas-day-attacks-on-washington-power-grid\/1082675\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Charged In Christmas Day Attacks On Washington Power Grid"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Two Charged In Christmas Day Attacks On Washington Power Grid<\/span><\/p>\n

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Two men have been hit with federal charges of conspiracy to damage energy facilities, over a Christmas Day attack on four electrical substations in Washington state. <\/strong>That charge carries a punishment of up to 20 years in prison.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Matthew Greenwood, 32, and Jeremy Crahan, 40, were arrested on Saturday<\/strong> and charged with breaking into the substations near Tacoma and tampering with power switches <\/strong>in a move that disconnected some 15,000 people from their electrical supply while inflicting $3 million in damage that may take up to 36 months<\/a> to repair.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

This doesn’t appear to have been an attack with political motivations. Authorities say Greenwood confessed that the scheme was aimed at facilitating their burglary of a business. <\/strong>Having knocked out the power, the duo allegedly traveled to the place of business, drilled out a lock and emptied the cash register.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Greenwood was also charged with illegally possessing a short-barreled shotgun and short-barreled rifle.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0The shotgun sounds like an oldie: It’s a Sears, Roebuck and Company shotgun with no serial number, according to the charging document<\/a>. Serial numbers have been broadly required to be placed on firearms since 1968<\/a>. The rifle is a Remington and appeared to have been equipped with a home-made silencer that leaned heavy on duct tape.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

They’re not much to look at…but these two short-barreled weapons were enough for feds to tack on two gun charges<\/strong> (FBI<\/a>)\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The two alleged criminals, both Puyallup residents, were tracked<\/a> down using cell phone tower data, and matching their pickup truck to security camera video.\u00a0<\/strong>The targeted substations are dozens of miles apart, and more than 12 hours passed between the first and last attack. Greenwood said he used bolt cutters provided by Crahan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe have seen attacks such as these increase in Western Washington and throughout the country<\/a> and must treat each incident seriously,\u201d said<\/a> US Attorney Nick Brown in a statement.\u00a0\u201cThe outages on Christmas left thousands in the dark and cold and put some who need power for medical devices at extreme risk.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, investigators have yet to make any arrests<\/a> in a more destructive attack<\/a> on the power grid in Moore County, North Carolina on Dec. 3.<\/strong>\u00a0In that incident, two substations came under gunfire, causing a loss of power to more than 35,000 customers during a week when temperatures dipped to 30 degrees.\u00a0 A $75,000 reward has been offered.<\/p>\n

Following that attack, there was widespread speculation\u00a0that\u00a0the perpetrators intended intended to cut power to a controversial drag show<\/a> that was scheduled to start in the sleepy town of Southern Pines about the same time as the attack.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A nationwide increase in attacks on power facilities <\/strong>prompted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last month to call for an evaluation of the physical security<\/a> of America’s electric grid.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nWed, 01\/04\/2023 – 19:45<\/span><\/p>\n

From:Zerohedge<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two Charged In Christmas Day Attacks On Washington Power Grid Two men have been hit with federal charges of conspiracy to damage energy facilities, over…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1082675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}