The co-owner of the neo-Nazi compound in northern Maine may be prohibited from possessing firearms due to prior felony convictions, a significant obstacle to any plans to build an illegal racist militia in Penobscot County.
Christopher A. Pohlhaus, 36, the public-facing leader of the neo-Nazi camp and related white supremacist Telegram channels, has drawn most of the attention from politicians and the news media for his racist public demonstrations, including a demonstration last week in Augusta.
But Pohlhaus’s isn’t the only name that appears on the mortgage deed for the 10.6 acre Springfield property that was purchased in 2022 to serve as the base camp for the neo-Nazi’s plans.
Fred Boyd Ramey, 47, Pohlhaus’s apparent Partner-in-Nazism, has drawn less attention despite his own checkered public history, including multiple guilty pleas to felony charges in Kansas, North Dakota, and Missouri.
The two men apparently shared an address on Green River St. in Cheyenne, Wyoming at the time they purchased the land in Maine.
Federal law 18 U.S.C. 922(g) prohibits anyone convicted of a felony from possessing a firearm, as does Maine law.
The federal penalty for firearm possession by a felon is up to ten years in prison.
Ramey did not respond to a request for comment.
Prior to joining forces with Pohlhaus, Ramey was a truck driver and a former Andrew Yang supporter.
Ramey founded “Truckers for Yang”, a super PAC that raised more than $100,000 to support Yang’s quixotic Democratic campaign for office. According to Federal Election Commission documents, Ramey was living in Maricopa, Arizona at the time.
In 2019, Ramey starred in a video with Yang, going by the moniker “Fred the Felon.”
According to Federal Election Commission records, Truckers for Yang (officially “TFY PAC”) made a single independent expenditure worth $28,000 on Dec. 19, 2019 to pay for pro-Yang ads to run on tractor-trailer trucks.
That payment went to Wizzard Way, the same Illinois-based trucking company where Ramey worked as a “transportation contractor.”
(Coincidentally, the cost of the plot in Springfield was $25,110, per county records.)
Ramey’s other business endeavors have been less successful.
In June of 2022, Ramey incorporated “White Working Class Consulting LLC” at that same Wyoming address he shares with Pohlhaus.
But the business apparently failed to take off, since the company was administratively dissolved on August 9 for failure to pay taxes.
A Twitter account that appears to belong to Ramey contains several posts that are at odds with his new role as business partner to New England’s most infamous neo-Nazi, including pleas for Ramey’s “fellow white people” to visit black churches in order to develop empathy for racial minorities.
After the election of 2020, though, Ramey’s political activism took a turn.
At a Pohlhaus-run demonstration in Ohio earlier this year, Ramey appeared alongside other masked neo-Nazis. Unlike most members at Pohlhaus’s Hitler-worshipping events, Ramey pulled his mask off and was subsequently identified by an Instagram influencer.
But where does the name “Fred the Felon” come from?
The post mentioning Ramey from Yang’s official account referred to Ramey as “Fred the Felon” and said Ramey served time in jail, though the tweet doesn’t say what for.
Records from Washington State may shed some light on that.
In 2018, Ramey was prohibited from getting a mortgage originators license in the state of Washington after he failed to properly disclose prior felony charges in North Dakota, Kansas, and Missouri.
According to the Washington State case summary, Ramey admitted to having felony convictions in Kansas and Missouri, though the specific crimes he admitted to are redacted from the records.
The summary says Ramey failed to disclose that he pled guilty to two felony counts in Richland County, North Dakota.
The nature of those felonies is redacted in Washington State records.
An Intellius report on Ramey indicates the Kansas case was related to the felony theft of between $500 and $25,000 in 1997; however, the Maine Wire was not able to independently confirm that report.
Someone with felonies on their record would also be prohibited, hypothetically, from using a tractor-trailer truck to traffick firearms from out-of-state into northern Penobscot County.
The Washington State Department of Financial Institutions found that Ramey perjured himself in his license application, but it’s not clear what punishment he was given apart from a ban on ever working as a mortgage originator in the state.
The Washington State affray didn’t stop him from getting into the mortgage business though.
According to a self-reported work history in the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System (NMLS), Ramey claims to be working as a mortgage originator for Home Mortgage Alliance Corporation, with locations in Santa Ana, Calif. and Phoenix.
However, he’s only ever been licensed to work on mortgages in California and Utah, and his licenses are not current.
The NLMS work history also provides a clue as to how Ramey may have met Pohlhaus.
According to the NMLS records, Ramey reported having worked at International Cruise & Excursions from Feb. 2013 to March 2015.
Some online records show Pohlhaus worked at International Cruise & Excursions in 2014.
Although Pohlhaus does not appear to have felony convictions in other states, like his business partner, he has had a few brushes with the law in Arizona and Kentucky.
According to criminal records in Maricopa County, Arizona, where Pohlhaus lived for a time after exiting the U.S. Marine Corps, he was charged, but never prosecuted or convicted, for multiple marijuana and drug paraphernalia-related felony offenses.
Pohlhaus failed to show for a 2012 court appearance, and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest. When he did appear, the charges were dismissed.
According to Jefferson County court records in Kentucky, Pohlhaus is also currently the defendant in an active court case (18-M-011894), though information about the nature of that case and whether it’s felony level is not publicly available. It’s most likely a traffic violation.
If Pohlhaus is still an active user of marijuana, that might complicate his plans to train a militia in proper firearms use, as Maine law prohibits active drug users from legally purchasing and using firearms.
In social media posts, Pohlhaus has openly bragged about using firearms on his Springfield property.
Online records show an email linked to Pohlhaus was registered with GunAuction.com, a website where users can buy and sell firearms, though information about any transactions he may have made are not publicly available.
Those same records also indicate that Pohlhaus, who studied video game design in college, is a superfan of World of Warcraft, the online multiplayer computer game.
An email account linked to Pohlhaus was exposed in data breaches of both GunAuction.com and OwnedCore, a forum where World of Warcraft fanatics can download cheats, bots, and hacks.
It’s unclear whether Pohlhaus has had gainful employment since working as a tattoo artist nearly ten years ago or is one of the tens of thousands of working-age men in Maine who rely on the state’s generous welfare benefits.
Pohlhaus did not respond to request for an interview.
5 Comments
For some strange reason WGME news site deleted a post that someone made which included this information when responding to another breathless article they published about the need for new laws and finding ways to battle white supremists aka nazis. Why would an unbiased news source want to hide the fact that a Democrat operative who raised $100k for a Chinese Democrat running for president was also the guy who bought a plot in Maine for Nazis? All they and other newspapers focus on is Chris. Doesn’t WGME and its editors want their readers to know the whole story? They knew about Fred Ramey from the beginning as did the hate “watchdog”. I mean, he’s got a swastika and is very photogenic as far as hate figures go. Whats the strategy here?
More like Fred The Fed
The author of this piece doesn’t seem to be aware that they stumbled backwards into evidence that this was a false flag perpetrated by the feds and confidential informants.
Brilliant research – now *that’s journalism – thanks
clowns!