A onetime member of a now-defunct Southern California white supremacist group was sentenced Thursday in downtown Los Angeles to three years and one month behind bars for inciting brawls at political rallies across the state eight years ago.
Robert Boman, 32, of Torrance, was convicted in March in Los Angeles federal court of two counts: conspiracy to violate the anti-riot act and rioting, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors told the jury that beginning around February 2017, Boman participated in a racist organization that presented itself on social media as a “combat-ready, militant group of a new nationalist identity movement.”
The defendant and his associates used the internet to post videos and pictures of themselves conducting training in hand-to-hand combat, interspersed with pictures and video clips of themselves assaulting people at political events, accompanied by messages in support of a white supremacist ideology, evidence showed.
The Southern Poverty Law Center once described the group as a “racist fight club,” with members “often photographed in bloody confrontations with protesters.”
The indictment states that Boman and his colleagues attended a number of peaceful protests, where they chased down and violently attacked counter-protesters. The rallies involved in the case were May 25, 2017, at Bolsa Chica Beach in Huntington Beach; April 15, 2017, in Berkeley; and June 10, 2017, in San Bernardino.
Two associates of Boman were also convicted.
Robert Rundo, 35, formerly of Huntington Beach, pleaded guilty in September 2024 to one count of conspiracy to violate the federal anti-riot act. He was sentenced to two years behind bars, which he had already served at the time of sentencing.
Rundo’s guilty plea came months after a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a federal criminal indictment against Rundo and Boman.
The indictment had been dismissed twice by an Orange County federal judge who found that Boman and Rundo were selectively prosecuted in comparison with members of far-left groups like antifa, who also physically assaulted people representing opposing views at some of the rallies but were not charged with the same crimes.
In the 9th Circuit opinion, a judge wrote that the opposing left- and right-wing groups were not similar enough to meet the required standard.
The third defendant, Tyler Laube, 29, of Redondo Beach pleaded guilty in October 2023 to punching a journalist several times and was fined $2,000 and sentenced to time served.
