A Tennessee man received 210 months in prison for a 2019 nonprofit arson and an effort to pass information to someone he believed was linked to Hezbollah, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said.
Regan Darby Prater, 28, of Tullahoma, pleaded guilty on April 13, 2026, to one count of arson and one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. The court imposed the sentence Oct. 20, 2026. It includes three years of supervised release and a restitution order of $1,289,000. The prison term is 17 years and six months.
A March 29, 2019, fire destroyed a building at the Highlander Center, a New Market nonprofit focused on research and education. DOJ said Prater used an incendiary device made with napalm and lit by a sparkler. Prosecutors described it as a “sparkler bomb.” The fire caused more than $1.2 million in damage. DOJ listed the restitution order separately from its damage estimate.
In his plea, Prater acknowledged that white-supremacist ideology and the center’s faith-based education and Civil Rights Movement ties motivated the attack, the department said. Before the fire, he spray-painted an Iron Guard symbol in the center’s parking lot. DOJ said the same symbol was engraved on a rifle used in the Christchurch attacks two weeks earlier.
The Hezbollah-related attempt also involved conduct in 2019. DOJ said Prater handed a document to someone he believed was associated with the group. The document purported to contain personally identifiable information about more than 35,000 people purportedly affiliated with Israel’s government, the department said. Prater’s message included the words, “Start the hunt,” according to DOJ.
The department said Hezbollah has been on the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations since 1997. The investigation involved the FBI’s Nashville office and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
