A 29-year-old Long Beach man pleaded guilty Tuesday to sending payments to ISIS and possessing a homemade bomb inside his home.<\/p>\n
Mark Lorenzo Villanueva<\/a> pleaded guilty in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom as part of an agreement with prosecutors<\/a> to one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Sentencing was scheduled for June 17, when the lawful permanent resident from the Philippines could face up to 35 years in prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.<\/p>\n The communication on social media messaging platforms with a person who identified himself as an ISIS fighter living in Syria began in February 2025, according to authorities. Villanueva sent the individual more than $1,600 “with the understanding that the money would be spent on ammunition, weapons, and other supplies in order for ISIS to conduct operations,” the DOJ said in a news release.<\/p>\n According to Western Union records, Villanueva sent about a dozen payments totaling $1,615 during a five-month period, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n Villanueva also talked about operations for ISIS in the United States, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s an honor to fight and die for our faith. It\u2019s the best way to go to heaven,” Villanueva allegedly told the purported ISIS members.<\/p>\n Authorities searched Villanueva’s Southern California home in August and found a manufactured bomb packed with ball bearings and other metal objects, such as nails, screws and nuts, the DOJ said. At the time, Villanueva already had a conviction in Los Angeles County Superior Court of felony stalking and was prohibited from possessing any firearm, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n He has been in federal custody since August 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 29-year-old Long Beach man pleaded guilty Tuesday to sending payments to ISIS and possessing a homemade bomb…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[3552,131,133,132,14312],"class_list":["post-152291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-crime-and-courts","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}