PLANO, Texas — The scheme, described as an international conspiracy involving kidnapping and murder, has led to serious charges for the men involved. Gavin Rivers Weisenburg, 21, and Tanner Christopher Thomas, 20, now face the prospect of life imprisonment after a grand jury in Texas’s Eastern District indicted them on Thursday.

The indictment details a chilling plan by Weisenburg and Thomas to seize control of Gonâve Island, located off Haiti’s coast, with the help of homeless individuals from Washington D.C. They allegedly intended to employ these individuals as mercenaries in a coup d’état against the island, which is home to an estimated 85,000 to 100,000 people.

According to court documents, their sinister plan, spanning from August 2024 to July 2025, included the acquisition of a sailboat, firearms, and ammunition. The ultimate goal was reportedly to kill all the men on the island and enslave the women and children. Their disturbing vision aimed to satisfy violent and abhorrent fantasies.

Once they got to the island, the men wanted to murder all the men and turn the women and children into sex slaves, court documents say. They planned to buy a sailboat, guns, and ammunition for the coup.

To make their scheme a reality, the two learned Haitian Creole. Thomas enlisted in the Air Force and messaged Weisenburg on social media, telling him it would help advance the plan.

While he was assigned to Ramstein Air Base in Germany for his initial station, he had himself reassigned to Joint Base Andrews, so he could stay in the U.S. and be nearer to D.C. to aid in recruiting people experiencing homelessness nearby to be part of their” army,” according to court documents.

Meanwhile, Weisenburg enrolled in the North Texas Fire Academy to train in command-and-control protocols — skills he would need, court documents say, for the armed coup. He failed out of school six months later.

Two weeks after being dismissed from the school, he flew to Thailand. There, he planned to enroll in a sailing school to learn to use the boat they planned to buy to reach Gonâve Island, court documents say. But the school was too expensive, and he did not end up enrolling.

At some point in this process, they also allegedly coerced a minor into participating in child pornography that they filmed.

Weisenburg and Thomas were charged federally with conspiracy to murder, maim or kidnap in a foreign country and production of child pornography. If convicted of the first charge, they face up to life in prison, and if convicted of the second charge, they face 15 to 30 years in prison.