A Bad Bunny concert in Atlanta this past May was the target for a mass shooting by a white supremacist looking to incite a race war against ahead of the presidential election.
NBC News reports that Mark Adams Prieto was arrested last month by the FBI and indicted on Tuesday (June 11) by a federal grand jury on charges of firearms trafficking, transfer of a firearm for use in a hate crime and possession of an unregistered firearm.
In October 2023, an FBI informant revealed that Prieto, 58, was planning to incite a race war, saying he believed there would be "a lot of African Americans at an Atlanta rap show," which would allow him to put up "a high body count" and leave Confederate flags to share his message.
“He specifically said that the attack should occur following Super Tuesday so that they would know the election candidates,” the arrest affidavit states.
The source told authorities they had gained Prieto's trust, speaking to him more than 15 times at gun shows in the Georgia area over the course of three years. The conversations grew more serious in the last year, with Prieto advocating for "a mass shooting" that targeted Blacks, Jews and/or Muslims.
The FBI investigated Prieto for months, keeping him under surveillance, which saw him allegedly attempt to recruit the informant as well as an undercover FBI agent to join him to pull off a mass shooting at the concert, while also selling them guns.
“Prieto told the undercover agent that he wanted them to wear hoodies, according to the affidavit, because he believed no one was going to be suspicious about someone wearing a hoodie at a rap concert," the report says.
The affidavit adds that Prieto alledgedly believed that after the 2024 martial law would be implemented. He asked the source if they would be "ready to kill a bunch of people" in a bid to recruit people to assist him in carrying out the attack.
A spokesperson for the FBI revealed that Prieto is now in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service, and will be transported from New Mexico to Arizona.