Pierce County power-grid attacker sentenced to federal prison

A Puyallup man has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for sabotaging four electrical substations in Pierce County on Christmas Day 2022.

Jeremy Crahan, 40, pleaded guilty in September and was sentenced on Friday.

Crahan and co-conspirator Matthew Greenwood, 32, of Puyallup have been ordered to pay $235,699 for the damage they did to the power grid.

Greenwood is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 19.

They attacked three electrical substations before sunrise Christmas morning and a fourth that night, knocking out power to about 15,000 customers.

Crahan’s defense attorney, Lance Hester of Tacoma-based Hester Law Group, blamed “methamphetamine-impacted decision-making” for the pair’s “most unfortunate of plans”: a plot to knock out power over wide areas before robbing local businesses and banking machines.

The pair managed to steal about $100 from the cash register of a Thai restaurant, according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office.

A spokesperson for Tacoma Power told The News Tribune it would take “multiple years” to fully repair its Graham and Elk Plain substations, both attacked on Christmas Day 2022.

Federal prosecutors say the men were plotting more attacks, involving sawing trees to fall on top of power lines, when they were arrested.

FBI officials say the two men are not suspected in a separate string of attacks on the Northwest power grid last year.

As KUOW and OPB reported in January, at least some of those attacks appeared to follow instruction manuals put out by neo-Nazis and other far-right extremists.

RELATED: FBI warned of neo-Nazi plots as attacks on Northwest grid spiked

In March, the FBI offered two $25,000 rewards in hopes of catching whoever shot up electrical substations near Olympia and Portland in November 2022. In each incident, someone shot a firearm or firearms at a high-voltage facility, damaged expensive equipment, and caused coolant oil to spew out of bullet holes and onto the ground, according to the FBI.

Officials with Puget Sound Energy and the Bonneville Power Administration, both of which suffered grid attacks in 2022, said none of their substations have been sabotaged in 2023.