This file photograph shows a courtroom gavel.
A Concord man was sentenced to prison Friday after being found guilty in a 2019 hate crime case in which he made criminal threats on a gaming website about wanting to kill Jewish people.
Ross Anthony Farca was found guilty in December of one misdemeanor hate crime and four felonies: two counts of criminal threats against investigating police officers, possession of an assault weapon, and the unlawful manufacturing of an assault weapon. He was sentenced Friday to five years and eight months, with one year to be served in Contra Costa County Jail and the remaining four years and eight months to be served in state prison, Contra Costa County district attorney’s officials said in a statement.
The sentencing comes roughly three years after Farca — who went by the online screen name “Adolf Hitler (((6 Million)))” in what the district attorney’s office said was a reference to the number of Jewish people killed during the Holocaust — threatened on video game website, Steam, to commit a mass shooting at a synagogue.
His sentencing was delayed three times “due to mental health diversion hearings,” officials said.
In 2019, Farca said he wanted to kill Jewish people and police officers with a “homemade assault rifle while live-streaming his actions” district attorney’s officials said. He cited the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand and the shooting at a San Diego mosque as his inspirations, according to a complaint filed at the time in the Northern District Court of California in San Francisco.
Someone shared a tip of the threats with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the agency went on to share Farca’s location with Concord police.
Concord police officers served a search warrant on his home in June 2019 and found an illegal AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, ammunition, 13 magazines, camouflage, and books about Hitlzer and Nazism during a search of his residence, police and district attorney’s officials said.
Deputy District Attorney Amber White said in a statement Friday that the sentencing “ensures the safety of the residents of Contra Costa County and the greater Jewish community.”
“Hate crimes disrupt the lives of both direct and indirect victims, and this sentence demonstrates that hate never wins,” White said.
Lauren Hernández (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @ByLHernandez
Lauren Hernández joined The San Francisco Chronicle in 2018. She covers breaking news, crime and general news. Previously, she was a breaking news reporter for the USA TODAY Network’s Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon. She studied journalism at San Jose State University, and was born and raised in Los Angeles. Hernández has bylines in the Silicon Valley Business Journal and The Desert Sun. Her reporting has received awards in California and Oregon. She is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the CCNMA Latino Journalists of California.
