Mark Adams Prieto wasn’t the most clandestine about his plans to incite a race war, the FBI says. The 58-year-old, who was arrested last month, unknowingly blabbed to an FBI agent about his spine-chilling plan to shoot up a rap concert and even allegedly sold two automatic rifles to the agent on the assumption that they were going to help him realize his terrifying plans.
That’s according to an indictment unsealed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Arizona on Tuesday, charging Prieto with firearms trafficking, transfer of a firearm for use in a hate crime, and possession of an unregistered firearm.
Prieto, of Prescott, Arizona, a small retirement community nestled in the North West corner of the state, began expressing his violent plans against minority groups to an informant at a weapons show in 2023, the indictment says.
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Prieto asked the informant, who had met and chatted with Prieto at the Crossroads of the West gun shows over the past three years, if he was “ready to kill a bunch of people” in late 2023, the feds say.
The informant said that Prieto had allegedly begun advocating for mass shootings against “Blacks, Jews, or Muslims,” and that he believed, the shooting should take place before martial law is enacted following the 2024 election.
Prieto also allegedly claimed to have been a Ukrainian mercenary and to have killed Russian soldiers. He also told the informant that he only dealt in cash as to avoid the ATF, the indictment says.
Prieto stands around his booth, where the FBI alleged he had nine guns strewn about.
Department of JusticeAn FBI agent accompanied the informant to a Crossroads of the West show on Jan. 20 this year to meet Prieto, who, the next day, allegedly asked the agent and informant to help execute his plans to shoot-up a rap concert in Atlanta, Georgia.
According to the indictment, Prieto told the pair that he planned to target the concert because there would a lot of Black people there, who he blamed for increasing crime rates in Georgia.
“You want to corral them. And some people might be trying to leave out of a corner, and you want to blast those guys. Once [they] get the idea that they are trapped, then there is pandemonium. Now they’re in a panic. And they can’t get out. Now they are going to be crawling over each other to get out,” Prieto allegedly told the pair.
Prieto planned to put up Confederate flags around the concert after the shooting with the message that “we’re going to fight back now, and every whitey will be the enemy across the whole country,” the indictment says.
Prieto’s plan was to have the agent and the informant help him cache weapons in Atlanta before the shooting and then on a separate trip, the feds say.
Then, at a February 24-25 Crossroads of the West gun show, he allegedly sold an AK-47 to the agent for the attack and bought a pistol for himself for the attack. The next month, Prieto was boothing at the Crossroads of the West gun show where he had machine guns, rifles, shot guns and pistols strewn about. Prieto is accused of selling an AR-15 to the agent at this show, intended to be used for the shooting.
“Yeah, yeah we gotta do it,” he allegedly told the agent, adding that waiting too long might jeopardize the plan.
The indictment says Prieto then identified a concert being held on May 14-15 at the State Farm Arena as the target of the attack. According to the State Farm Arena’s website, Bad Bunny performed on those days.
Prieto, allegedly, planned to scout the concert venue in May after visiting his mom in Florida, and then meet his two purported accomplices back on June 1 and 2 during the next gun show.
However, on May 14, while Prieto was driving through New Mexico en route to Florida, he was arrested and admitted to planning an attack on a “rock concert where young people and minorities [would be],” according to the indictment.
