Department of Justice

Richard Schmidt

Federal agents are trying to determine how a suspected Ohio white supremacist with a felony conviction for manslaughter acquired a cache of 18 assault weapons and other firearms, along with high-capacity magazines and more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition, according to federal law enforcement officials and court documents reviewed by NBC News.

The storehouse of weapons was discovered late last  month when FBI agents arrested Richard Schmidt,  47, the owner of a Bowling Green sporting goods store called Spindletop Sports Zone,  on charges of  marketing counterfeit goods -- such as football jerseys with NFL logos -- from China.

Although initially portrayed as a probe into the thriving international market for counterfeit clothing, the case took a surprising turn this week when the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Cleveland unsealed search warrants and an indictment also charging Schmidt with illegal possession of firearms.

According to the documents, FBI agents who searched Schmidt’s sporting goods store and four trailers behind it, found a  stash of weapons that included AR-15 assault rifles, Ruger and Sig Sauer semi-automatic pistols,  bulletproof  body armor and high-capacity magazines as well as ammunition.

The agents also discovered evidence of Schmidt’s ties to the neo-Nazi movement, documents show. Among the evidence seized, according to search warrants, was a video of a national convention of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement; bumper stickers of the National Alliance party, another neo-Nazi group; a “Jewish 500” list -- a supposed roster of Jewish-owned businesses -- and paraphernalia from the “Waffen SS,” Adolph Hitler’s Nazi military force in Germany from the early 1930s through World War II, according to the search warrants.

A federal law enforcement official, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said that FBI counterterrorism agents involved in the  case  had picked up evidence that Schmidt  may have been planning attacks against Jewish and civil rights groups in the Detroit area. “This is an active investigation,” said another federal law enforcement official when asked if Schmidt was believed to have been working with any others in the neo-Nazi movement.

In the indictment unsealed this week, Schmidt was charged with three counts of illegal possession of firearms, ammunition and body armor and one count of trafficking in counterfeit goods.

Schmidt’s lawyer, federal public defender Andy Hart, did not respond to a request for comment. 

The law enforcement officials said the case appears to illustrate some of the gaps in current  background checks for gun purchasers that President Barack Obama has proposed closing as part of his package of executive actions and legislative proposals released this week aimed at curbing gun violence. Schmidt was charged with murder and felonious assault in 1989 after killing a Hispanic man  and shooting two others with a semi-automatic pistol during a traffic dispute. He later pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison. Federal officials were not immediately able to provide information on when he was released from prison.  

Despite a federal law that prohibits convicted felons from buying firearms, Schmidt was still able to acquire his stockpile – though authorities don’t yet know how he acquired them. Federal agents have been trying for weeks to trace the weapons, but officials said they have so far made little progress. This could indicate that Schmidt purchased his weapons from private dealers or gun shows, where background checks are currently not required, one official said. But he also could have obtained them on the black market.

“It is deeply troubling that law enforcement found this man, with a prior homicide conviction, in possession of an arsenal,” said Steven M. Dettelbach, the U.S. attorney for Cleveland.

NBC/WSJ poll: Public lowers expectation for Obama's second term

Mark Potok, who tracks hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the group had found an entry that appeared to be from Schmidt on a neo-Nazi website several years ago, using the Yahoo profile of “Vinlander 101” and declaring his plans to set up a “historical preservation” group. (One of the trailers behind Schmidt’s sporting goods store was registered to the “Vinland Preservation League” -- a now defunct nonprofit.) He noted that the use of the word “Vinland” was likely inspired by the “Vinland Social Club,” a now largely dormant neo-Nazi skinhead group that emphasized the early Vikings role in colonizing the American continent. 

“The sad reality is there are people around this country who are building up enormous arsenals of  weapons because they think the end is coming -- either  a race war, or the new world order … or some other form of apocalypse,” he said. 

More from Open Channel:

• US asks Turkey, Jordan to secure chem weapons if Syria crisis worsens
• Obama plan eases freeze on CDC gun violence research
• Guns already allowed in schools with little restriction in many states

Follow Open Channel from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

The gunman who allegedly attacked a Sikh temple in southern Wisconsin, killing six people and wounding four, was a “white supremacist skinhead” and “frustrated neo-Nazi” who led a white power punk and metal band, groups that track extremism said Monday.

Wade Michael Page, 40, was the founder of End Apathy, according to Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. In a blog post about Page, Potok cited an April 2010 interview that the alleged gunman gave to the “Uprise Direct” music website about the band’s work.

MySpace, End Apathy

A photo of Wade Michael Page, 40, who is accused of killing six people and wounding four others at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis.

Page said his band, which formed in 2005, “was based on trying to figure out what it would take to actually accomplish positive results in society and what is holding us back. A lot of what I realized at the time was that if we could figure out how to end people’s apathetic ways it would be the start towards moving forward. Of course after that it requires discipline, strict discipline to stay the course in our sick society.

“So, in a sense it was view of psychology and sociology. But I didn't want to just point the finger at what other people should do, but also I was willing to point out some of my faults on how I was holding myself back. And that is how I wrote the song ‘Self Destruct,’’ he said.

Mark Pitcavage, director of investigative research for the Anti-Defamation League, said Page was a mem­ber of the Ham­mer­skins, "one of the oldest and largest hardcore racist skinhead groups," and iden­ti­fied him­self as a North­ern Ham­mer­skin, part of the group’s upper Mid­west branch. 

End Apa­thy had been a fea­tured band in recent years at many Hammerskin-organized white power music con­certs, such as the August 2010 “Meet  & Greet BBQ & Bands” in North Car­olina, the Ham­mer­skins’ St. Patty’s Day Show in March 2011 in Orlando, Fla., and Ham­mer­fest 2011 last Octo­ber in Orlando, Pitcavage noted in a blog post, in which he described Page as a "white supremacist skinhead."

“We had identified Page several years ago as someone who was prominent in the white-power music scene,” he told NBC News. He said Page also used a pseudonym, “Jack Boot,” an apparent reference to the high military boots worn by members of dictatorial regimes such as Nazi Germany.

The white-power music scene is one of the main things that the Hammerskins do in the United States and is a “fairly important part of the white supremacist subculture" in the country, said Pitcavage. Because of Page's role in that music scene, he had already become linked with the Hammerskins through his involvement in bands tied to the group and his performances at their events.

Page became a “fully patched” member of the Hammerskins by late 2011 after going through an apprenticeship period. He had one of their tattoos on his right arm -- a sort of cogwheel with the numbers 838 inside it (838 is an alpha-numeric code that means “hail crossed hammers,” a reference to their logo of two-crossed hammers that was taken from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”), Pitcavage said. The tattoo also had the group’s colors of red, black and yellow.

A photo of Page also showed that he had a Celtic Cross tattoo with the number 14 in it, which is a “major white supremacist symbol,” Pitcavage said.

The Hammerskins emerged in Texas in the mid-to-late 1980s and spread across the country. They are loosely organized, not hierarchical and tend to group themselves regionally.

“It has had a strong association with violence over the past several decades,” Pitcavage said, noting that it was not surprising that the alleged gunman “was a white supremacist because white supremacist shooting sprees tend to be directed at minorities.”

FBI probes background of Sikh temple shooting suspect
Sikhs reel after senseless attack: 'We're not Taliban'
Sikhs at the Golden Temple, their holiest shrine

Page said in the “Uprise” interview that his music was a mix of '80s punk, metal and Oi!, a subgenre of punk.

“The topics vary from sociological issues, religion, and how the value of human life has been degraded by being submissive to tyranny and hypocrisy that we are subjugated to,” he said in the interview.

Page was a “frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band,” wrote Potok, of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “In 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center has found that Page also attempted to purchase goods from the neo-Nazi National Alliance, then America's most important hate group.”

The FBI was “looking at ties to white supremacist groups” in the case, said Teresa Carlson, FBI special agent in charge in Milwaukee. They were also investigating the attack as possible domestic terrorism, which she noted meant use of force or violence for social or political gain. The FBI did not have an active investigation on Page before Sunday.

Page, an Army veteran who served from 1992 to 1998 but was never deployed, said in the “Uprise” interview that he was from Colorado and that in 2000 he “wanted to basically start over.”

“So, I sold everything I owned except for my motorcycle and what I could fit into a backpack and went on cross country trip visiting friends and attending festivals and shows. I went to the Hammerfest 2000 in Georgia, over to North Carolina, up to Ohio, down to West Virginia, and out to California… .”

Since 2009, the United States has been in the middle of a “huge resurgence” of right-wing extremism largely split into two spheres: an anti-government extremist one, such as the militia movement, and white supremacists, Pitcavage said. The number of militia groups has quintupled in the past three years and there have been many arrests of white supremacists over the same time for acts of violence, he said.

The election of a non-white president and the struggling economy were the triggers, Pitcavage said.

“It’s just a huge number of incidents from the extreme right since 2009. It’s the biggest resurgence of right-wing extremist activity since the mid-1990s and the Oklahoma City bombing (in 1995), and it’s causing problems all around the country,” he added.

On End Apathy's Myspace page, the group listed its location as Nashville, N.C., and said they had finished recording for an upcoming release on Label 56, which the ADL described as a Maryland-based company that distributes racist skinhead music, videos and merchandise. The last login for the page was dated Feb. 21, 2012.

Label 56 issued a statement Monday saying that all images and products related to the group had been removed from their website.

“We do not wish to profit from this tragedy financially or with publicity,” said the label. “In closing please do not take what Wade did as honorable or respectable and please do not think we are all like that.”

Label 56 officials did not respond to an email and phone call seeking comment.

More content from NBCNews.com:

• Alleged gunman in Sikh temple shooting ID'd as Army vet
• Sikhs reel after 'senseless' attack: We're not Taliban
• Wounded cop in Sikh termple shooting lauded as hero
• Gay couples face big hurdles to parenthood
• Video: Dog-paddling pooch swims with dolphins

Follow US News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook