A federal grand jury in Maryland has indicted Jack LaSota, the namesake of a cult-like fringe group with ties to the Bay Area, whose adherents have been linked to half a dozen deaths across the country.
The former Vallejo resident was charged Wednesday with one count of possessing firearms and ammunition as a fugitive. LaSota has two outstanding warrants after failing to appear in separate criminal trials in Sonoma County and Pennsylvania. She was arrested in Maryland in February on several misdemeanor firearm, trespassing, and obstruction charges and is currently being held without bail in Allegany County, according to public records.
Attorneys for LaSota were not immediately available for comment.
Federal prosecutors allege that LaSota possessed a .50-caliber sniper rifle, a handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition at the time of her arrest, according to the indictment. If convicted, she could face up to 15 years in federal prison, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release. Two other individuals, Michelle Zajko and Daniel Blank, were arrested with LaSota in Maryland, but do not appear to be facing federal charges.
LaSota gained international notoriety after the killing of Vallejo landlord Curtis Lind earlier this year, which authorities have linked to several violent incidents across the country. Solano County prosecutors have charged 23-year-old Maximilian Snyder with Lind’s murder. In November, Snyder filed for a marriage license with an individual charged in the killing of a border patrol agent in Vermont just days after Lind’s death. A gun used in that shooting was allegedly bought by a person of interest in the double-homicide of Zajko’s parents in Pennsylvania on Dec. 31, 2022.
Called “Zizians” by their critics, the group is largely made up of young, highly educated individuals with backgrounds in math and computer science. They appear to follow an ideological offshoot of Rationalist philosophy described by LaSota in online forums and blog posts. Their core beliefs include staunch veganism, fears over artificial intelligence, and a belief that people have more than one consciousness because they have two brain hemispheres. Individuals associated with the Zizians have been linked to at least six deaths in California, Pennsylvania and Vermont.
LaSota has not been charged in connection with any of the deaths.
LaSota moved to the Bay Area in 2016 after dropping out of a master’s degree program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. After struggling to maintain consistent employment and long-term housing, LaSota and other Zizians developed elaborate methods to avoid the Bay Area’s high cost of living, according to years of blog posts written by LaSota. This included living on a 94-foot tugboat she acquired in her home state of Alaska.
The Zizians’ off-grid lifestyle eventually brought them to Vallejo, where LaSota and several other ideologically aligned individuals lived out of box trucks and buses on Lind’s property. Blog posts described the setup as a convenient way to avoid high rental costs and the pitfalls of modern society.
LaSota also faked her death in August 2022 by staging a boating accident in the middle of the night in the San Francisco Bay. The incident prompted a 30-hour U.S. Coast Guard search covering 167 square miles. Her hometown newspaper published an obituary, and her family initiated a probate case.
Three months later, Vallejo police contacted LaSota at the South Vallejo property, before she again disappeared. She was arrested in Pennsylvania in January 2023. After posting bail, her mother told the court LaSota would be staying at their home in Alaska while she awaited trial, according to court records. Instead, she disappeared again until her arrest in Maryland earlier this year.
