On the eve of May Day 2012, the FBI announced it had thwarted an anarchist plot to blow up a Cleveland-area bridge. The five accused were young, unstable, and mostly homeless men from Occupy Cleveland's fringe; the plot's engine was Shaquille Azir, a paid informant with a long fraud record, who had recruited them, employed them, driven them, supplied alcohol, and connected them to an undercover agent selling inert C-4. The Bureau controlled the "explosives" at every moment; the public was never in danger from anyone but the government's own scenario.
Douglas Wright, Brandon Baxter, and Connor Stevens pleaded guilty and — after prosecutors invoked the terrorism enhancement — received sentences of eight to eleven and a half years, with Joshua Stafford convicted at trial and sentenced to ten. Occupy's national network adopted the four as political prisoners, and their case, paired with the NATO 3, completed the lesson of 2012: the sting playbook refined on Muslim communities after 9/11 had been turned on the domestic left, converting the movement's most vulnerable hangers-on into its terrorism statistics.