ST. LOUIS – Three people from St. Louis and an Atlanta man appeared in U.S. District Court on Thursday and were found guilty of acting as illegal agents of the Russian government.

Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri said Omali Yeshitela, 82, Penny Hess, 78, and Jesse Nevel, 34, of St. Louis, and Augustus C. Romain Jr., 38, of Atlanta, conspired to support Russia’s efforts to “undermine the U.S.”

Yeshitela, Hess, Nevel, and Romain were charged with conspiracy to act as agents of a foreign government as part of a superseding indictment on April 13, 2023.

Sentencing has not been scheduled. Each defendant faces up to five years in federal prison.

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According to prosecutors, Yeshitela, Hess, and Nevel were leaders of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) and worked on behalf of the Russian government from at least May 2015 until July 2022. Romain was once a high-level official in the APSP until November 2018, when he left the organization, traveled to Georgia, and founded a new group called the Black Hammer.

All four had ties to Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, the founder and head of the Russian government-funded Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR).

Prosecutors said in May 2015, Ionov invited Yeshitela on an all-expenses-paid trip to Russia to “communicate on future cooperation.” Yeshitela communicated with Hess, Nevel, and Romain that Ionov was indeed an instrument of the Russian government and that the Russians were acting in the United States and “to sow division inside” the country.

Ionov provided cash and directed Yeshitela, Hess, and Nevel to draft and publish a petition calling for the United Nations to charge the U.S. with an active genocide against the African people. Hess eventually complied with the request, and Ionov promoted the petition and the trio’s actions in Russian media.

In 2016, Ionov funded a four-city tour to promote the petition. At the conclusion of the tour, Yeshitela told his cohorts in the APSP that their organization had “developed a relationship with forces in Russia who are involved in their own struggle with the U.S.”

Prosecutors said Ionov later attempted to influence elections in St. Petersburg, Florida, including offering financial support to Nevel, who was running for mayor at the time.

In April 2020, Ionov invited both Yeshitela and Nevel to speak at a conference to promote Russian-backed secessionist groups in eastern Ukraine. After Russa invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Ionov directed the defendants to demonstrate outside a California-based social media company to protest the “suppression” of pro-Russian views. That May, Romain demonstrated outside an Atlanta media company to celebrate Russia’s “Victory Day.”

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