Neo-Nazi leader Robert Rundo appears to be violating his federal supervised release

American neo-Nazi leader Robert Rundo appears to have engaged in conduct that could violate the terms of his supervised release, according to a former federal prosecutor who spoke with Decoherence Media. Images shared on social media show Rundo with convicted felon Kyle Otey and indicate that they traveled to Pennsylvania to fight at a combat event organized by the neopagan white supremacist group Wolves of Vinland. 

Rundo currently appears to be living in Texas, based on social media content and a public records aggregator. He did not respond to requests for comment about his travel to Pennsylvania, his association with Otey, or his residence in Texas. A letter addressed to him and sent to a Watauga, Texas address was received and signed for by “K MORR.”

Otey is a member of the Lone Star Active Club—a North Texas chapter of Rundo's Active Club network. Reached for comment, he declined to answer questions.

Rundo co-founded the now-defunct Rise Above Movement (RAM) and founded its spinoff, the transnational Active Club network which operates in dozens of U.S. states. He was sentenced by a U.S. District Court in the state of California in December 2024 to two years’ time served, followed by two years of supervised release after pleading guilty to conspiracy to violate the federal Anti-Riot Act. 

Rundo’s release, which expires in December, includes two standard conditions stating the the defendant must not “knowingly associate with any person convicted of a felony unless granted permission to do so by the probation officer” or “knowingly leave the judicial district without first receiving the permission of the court or probation officer.” 

Decoherence Media was unable to confirm whether Rundo received permission to travel to Pennsylvania or associate with Otey.

On paper, violating those conditions can mean revocation of supervised release and a return to prison. In practice, such violations are rarely pursued. 

“Associating with a known felon is likely a violation as written, but it's hardly ever pursued by the feds," said Ken White, a former federal prosecutor in the Central District of California where Rundo was convicted. "I've seen maybe two or three violations on that basis in my entire career," he told Decoherence Media.

"Whether to submit a violation to the court rests almost entirely with the probation officer,” White said. “Traveling out of district without permission would likely draw a slap on the wrist and a warning—unless probation is already fed up with him."

Rundo's release also imposes special digital-monitoring conditions. He must disclose to his probation officer all of his digital devices, usernames, email accounts, social media accounts, messaging applications, and cloud storage accounts, along with their passwords. Any new account must be disclosed before first use. The court also imposed special conditions barring him from contact with RAM members.

From Queens to Romania

As a teenager in Queens, Rundo stabbed a rival gang member in the chest, arms, and neck outside a store in 2009. The attack was reportedly part of a feud between the Original Flushing Crew, of which Rundo was a member, and a local subset of MS-13. Rundo pleaded guilty to gang assault and served roughly 20 months in a New York state prison. 

In 2016, Rundo co-founded the Rise Above Movement, which quickly developed a reputation as one of the most violent groups in the burgeoning Alt-Right movement. They frequently attended protests in California to engage in political street violence against groups they perceived to be left-wing or “antifa.”

For inciting violence at rallies in Huntington Beach, Berkeley, and San Bernardino, Rundo was charged in the Central District of California in 2018 under the federal Anti-Riot Act. The case took six years to resolve. In 2019, a federal judge threw out the charges and ruled that the Anti-Riot Act violated the First Amendment. The case was dismissed again in 2024 on the grounds that Rundo had been selectively prosecuted. The Ninth Circuit reversed the decisions, reinstating charges both times.

After the first dismissal, Rundo fled the country for Eastern Europe—staying in Serbia and Bulgaria. While abroad, he created the "Active Club" network, a decentralized, transnational web of white nationalist fight clubs modeled after European far-right hooligan culture, as the de-facto successor to RAM. He was arrested in Romania in March 2023 and extradited to the United States that August. In September 2024, Rundo pleaded guilty, and on December 13, 2024, was sentenced to two years' imprisonment—fully credited to time served—and two years of supervised release.

Rundo’s record is one reason Mike German, a former FBI special agent and co-author of Policing White Supremacy, said he was not surprised by Rundo's alleged conduct on release. "Law enforcement authorities, including judges, tend to treat far-right violence much more leniently than violence committed by people of color or far-left activists,” German told Decoherence Media. “Rundo's own criminal history provides such an example."

Hannah Gais, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center who has tracked Rundo and the Active Club network for years, said she felt none of this is out of character. “Rundo’s behavior and continued involvement in the white supremacist movement is about as surprising as the sun rising each morning,” she told Decoherence Media. “In 2022, while in Europe evading federal rioting charges, he compared himself to Jason Bourne, a fictional CIA assassin. He founded and led the active clubs while in Europe dodging these charges. When arrested in 2023, authorities found falsified identity documents.”

"What surprises me isn't that Rundo is still involved, to the degree that he is, in the movement," Gais said. "Rather, what alarms me is that the conditions of his supervised release are quite clear. And yet, here he is, leading a network of groups much larger than RAM ever was that bears astonishing similarities to it in terms of tactics, philosophy, and even membership in some clubs."

“Troy”

Kyle Otey, who uses the alias “Troy” on Telegram, is a convicted felon. He was arrested in November 2017 and charged with capital murder in connection with the 2017 shooting deaths of two teenagers in North Texas. In June 2022, he pleaded guilty to tampering with or fabricating physical evidence with intent to impair—a third-degree felony—and was sentenced to five years in state prison, according to a Tarrant County judgment of conviction. 

Otey was identified by the Texas Observer as the owner of Blue Collar Tree and Junk Removal, a North Texas business linked to American neo-fascist group Patriot Front's commercial network. Rundo's association with Otey was not limited to the Pennsylvania trip. A post from an Active Club-linked Instagram account on April 25 showed Rundo and Otey standing next to another Lone Star Active Club member, Avery Ross Ruiz, who heads the U.S. chapter of an underground Russian street fight promotion. The post was quickly deleted by the account owner, and Instagram has since removed the account entirely from its platform. An uncropped version of the picture is still available on a Pinterest account associated with Rundo. On May 1, Ruiz posted a disappearing Instagram story of himself, Rundo, and Otey shirtless and flexing.

Feast of tyrants

A photo posted to Ruiz's Instagram story shows him and Rundo sitting together at a table, alongside Patriot Front member Kieran Padraig Morris and Marston Sneddon, a member of Wolves of Vinland. Originally posted to Morris's Instagram story, the same photo was also posted to the Lone Star Active Club Telegram channel, altered to blur Rundo.

Decoherence Media reached out to Marston Sneddon and Kieran Morris for comment, but they did not respond to the claims about them.

Features of the house’s interior shown in the picture—including the molding, shelves, and placement of light switches—appear to match a Watauga, Texas home owned by Patriot Front member Josiah Buster. The same address was listed as the principal office of Veteran Brothers Roofing and Restoration in the company's 2022 Public Information Report.

Veteran Brothers Roofing and Restoration was identified by the Texas Observer in January as part of a North Texas network of businesses with ties to Patriot Front.

CBC News separately geolocated Rundo in 2025 to Lone Star Active Club’s private gym where it documented him meeting with members of Second Sons, a Canadian Active Club chapter. The Texas Observer reported that the gym, a suite in North Richland Hills, operates under a 2025 "private athletic training" permit held by Grand Pine Developments, a company owned by Buster.

Decoherence Media reached out to Josiah Buster with a request for comment, but he did not respond.

A video posted on May 12 to Telegram shows Rundo talking in front of a brick wall between a door and an arched window. The brick pattern appears to match pictures of the Watauga house’s patio. The channel that hosted the video carries Active Club propaganda alongside selfies and posts signed by Rundo. Decoherence Media is not naming it to avoid amplification, and refers to it here as the Rundo-linked Active Club Telegram channel.

Intelius, a public records aggregator, lists the Watauga address as "related to" Rundo—consistent with the video match. Commercial records aggregators compile information from unverified public sources and can be outdated or imprecise.

Decoherence Media could not confirm if Rundo had his supervised release transferred to Texas. 

“Rob Desalvio”

In late March, several members of Patriot Front and the Active Club network gathered at a Confederate-themed store in Traveler’s Rest, South Carolina for a boxing tournament dubbed “American Muscle 2.” Rundo posted to Telegram that he was unable to attend “due to parole restrictions.” Instead, he “found a local event” and won “in the second round by TKO.” A video of the event he posted to Telegram showed the lettering “Warrior Martial Arts Academy” in the background. 

A “Sparring Session” event hosted by Warrior Martial Arts Academy, a training center in Texas offering programs for kids and adults, listed a “Rob Desalvio” from “Fight Club Italy” among that weekend’s fighters. Desalvio is the surname of Rundo’s mother, according to New York marriage records, and the name of his maternal grandfather, Robert J. DeSalvio. 

Rundo’s grandfather was a 32-year New York City Police Department veteran who retired in 1990 as a captain and died in 2022, according to his obituary. 

Property records show Rundo’s mother owns the mailing address listed in the Articles of Organization for a neo-fascist lifestyle brand company Rundo started. 

Decoherence Media reached out to Lorraine Desalvio and the Warrior Martial Arts Academy with requests for comment, but they did not respond.

“Forest Fights. I’ve done it.”

Two months after citing “parole restrictions” as the reason he couldn’t attend American Muscle 2, Rundo traveled to Pennsylvania over Memorial Day weekend with Otey and Ruiz for a 14-on-14 bareknuckle brawl “Forest Fight” inside the ghost town Concrete City. 

Rundo wore a black balaclava with the numeral XIV (a reference to the white supremacist “Fourteen Words” slogan), long sleeves, leggings, and a pair of shorts from his fascist lifestyle brand.

The Counter Extremism Project was the first to report that this masked man resembled Rundo. 

Decoherence Media was able to independently identify Rundo as one of the masked fighters through his weigh-in weight, his shoes, a distinctive forehead scar, and gestures he has used in other photographs. Rundo himself later boasted on his podcast about fighting in Forest Fights. 

Rundo did not respond to questions about whether he attended the event.

Rundo’s brand involvement in the event went beyond the shorts he wore. After the Memorial Day weekend event, the Wolves of Vinland's Koryos chapter thanked the brand "for making our Koryos jerseys for this last Forest Fight.”

The Memorial Day weekend fight was the third in a series of underground white nationalist team brawls, organized by Wolves of Vinland, and dubbed “Forest Fights.” The Rundo-linked Active Club Telegram channel had promoted the series from its start. After the first U.S. event in March, the channel posted that "the European hooligan tradition crossed the Atlantic and landed hard," promising "more of these coming coast to coast." 

In a weigh-in video from the Memorial Day weekend event, Rundo is shown weighing in at 190 pounds, identical to the March weigh-in by "Rob Desalvio" at Warrior Martial Arts Academy. He wears Nike Juniper Trail 3 running shoes in the "Dark Smoke Grey / Black / Wolf Grey / Light Orewood Brown" colorway, matching shoes he wore unmasked in an April 26 video from the Rundo-linked Active Club Telegram channel.

In photos and video from the event, Rundo covers his eyes with a two-finger gesture, matching poses he has used in other photographs. Another photo shows him making a three-finger Serbian pozdrav sa tri prsta salute. A distinctive forehead scar visible above the balaclava matches a scar on Rundo's forehead in shape, orientation, and position relative to the eyebrow and hairline.

A photo posted to the Instagram account of Otey's business, Blue Collar Tree and Junk Removal—tagging Ruiz, and reposted by Ruiz to his own Instagram story—shows Rundo, his face blurred, standing with Ruiz, Otey, and an unidentified fourth man above the caption "Texas wrecking crew."

Decoherence Media reached out to Kyle Otey with a request for comment, but he did not respond to the claims about him.

Despite his blurred face, Rundo later boasted about participating in Forest Fights. In the debut episode of his recently launched podcast—filmed inside Lone Star Active Club’s private gym in North Texas—he listed his personal accomplishments to the camera: "organized underground boxing events, created the Active Clubs… fought in underground street fights. No, not street fights, underground boxing events. Forest Fights. I've done it. I've been through them a lot."

Decoherence Media reached out to Avery Ruiz with a request for comment and he responded with a racial epithet.

The Lone Star Active Club did not reply to a request for comment.

“For now, we’re good”

Rundo's Instagram following grew substantially after a May CBS 60 Minutes broadcast of a lengthy interview with him in which he told correspondent Lesley Stahl there was "fun in fascism." On July 14, Instagram permanently disabled Rundo's account under its "dangerous individuals and organizations" policy. The Rundo-linked Active Club Telegram channel posted a screenshot of Instagram's removal notice, which said the decision could not be appealed. 

In a voice memo posted to the channel the week before the Forest Fight in Concrete City, Rundo lamented “bugmen” journalists who are trying to “make it illegal for white guys to work out together.” He continued: “I don’t foresee this happening anytime in the future, especially not with the current administration we have. So for now, we’re good. While we have this administration that doesn’t have the boot on our neck, we should make the most of it.”

In a December 2025 post he authored on a since-deleted Active Club Substack, Rundo wrote that "the real terror isn't the state… It's the swarm," which he described as "a loose, borderless ecosystem of journalists, NGOs, Antifa informants, freelance OSINT weirdos and intelligence-adjacent hipsters… One guy gets a grant from the NED, another gets a Guardian byline, a third gets to feel like Jason Bourne for a weekend." Rundo also shared his policy recommendations, writing, "any serious right-wing government that ever takes power has one non-negotiable priority: Gut the entire media-intelligence-activist complex, root and branch. Trials. Prison. Deportation. Whatever it takes."

The Rundo-linked Telegram channel has also floated the idea of a presidential pardon. In July, responding to a video of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller discussing left-wing terrorism, it asked: "when are all the guys from Rise Above Movement going to get a pardon for fighting these scum bag terrorist [sic]."

Hannah Gais emphasized that the absence of consequences carries its own message. "If the behavior of a leader like Rundo goes unenforced, it sends a clear message to the rest of the movement: there is little standing in their way," she said. "His case shows them that when it comes to white supremacist organizing, the legal system isn't a blockade—it's just a minor inconvenience." Gais pointed to the rapid proliferation of Active Clubs across Europe and the Americas as "fruits of the legal system's inattentiveness."

Federal probation records are not public. Decoherence Media was unable to determine whether Rundo's probation officer is aware of his alleged travel and associations, or whether his accounts are being monitored under the special digital-monitoring terms of his supervised release.

A Public Information Officer from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts declined to comment.