Kyle Norton Riester, a first lieutenant on active duty with the 12th Aviation Battalion at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, argued in legal papers this month that “the Divine guidance and instruction he had received while communing with LSD” drove him to sell the hallucinogenic drug on dark-web marketplaces during the coronavirus pandemic. (Nicholas Priest/Army)
An Army helicopter pilot who federal prosecutors say shipped nearly 1,800 orders of LSD to buyers on the “dark web” argued in court Wednesday that he has a religious right to sell the drug, deploying an unconventional legal strategy in an attempt to stave off his indictment.
Kyle Norton Riester, a first lieutenant on active duty with the 12th Aviation Battalion at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, argued in legal papers this month that “the Divine guidance and instruction he had received while communing with LSD” drove him to sell the hallucinogenic drug on dark-web marketplaces during the coronavirus pandemic.
“He felt compelled to dispense to co-religionists,” an attorney for Riester, George G. Lake, argued at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. “His religion still compels him,” Lake said Wednesday as Riester nodded along.
Federal prosecutors allege that the Black Hawk pilot, who has a security clearance, collected nearly $122,000 in LSD proceeds over an 11-month period. He shipped at least 1,797 orders from 2022 to 2024, they said, to buyers including a 15-year-old and an undercover law enforcement officer. Riester was indicted last year in a separate money-laundering case in Texas.
Details of a drug-trafficking investigation usually would not be made public before an indictment, but Riester filed a civil lawsuit claiming his LSD sales were a sincere religious exercise protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. A judge on Wednesday rejected those arguments, clearing a path for prosecutors to file drug-distribution charges.
Judge Anthony J. Trenga denied a request for a preliminary injunction to bar Riester’s prosecution on religious grounds, finding that the government has a public health and safety interest in preventing the sale of controlled dangerous substances. Assuming Riester’s spiritual beliefs were sincere, Trenga said, “it’s far from clear that that sincere religious belief would extend to the indiscriminate selling of LSD on the dark web.”
Trenga had already denied two previous requests to stop the prosecution, finding that “Riester’s admitted selling of LSD on the dark web cannot likely be deemed sufficiently narrow and restrictive to ensure that only individuals of Riester’s same religion, rather than recreational users of LSD, were accessing the drug.”
Courts have found that the use of ayahuasca, peyote, marijuana or other psychoactive drugs in some cases is protected as a religious exercise when the trappings and rituals of organized worship are observed. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a court filing that Riester “did not sell LSD in the context of a religious gathering or ritual, or to people with whom he shared spiritual experiences; he sold LSD on the dark web, a forum designed to ensure the anonymity of its users.”
“He sold LSD on the dark web to anyone who was willing to pay,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kirstin O’Connor said at the hearing Wednesday.
Riester remains on active-duty status after admitting in court documents that he consumed and sold LSD, and he continues to draw a paycheck, his attorney said. He is in dishonorable discharge proceedings and was granted pretrial release in the Texas money-laundering case, Lake said.
An Army spokesperson told The Washington Post that Riester’s discharge is pending and that he had been reassigned to administrative duties and “does not have access to classified material.”
The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment on the looming indictment. The prosecutor handling Riester’s criminal case sat in the courtroom gallery for Wednesday’s hearing.
Riester spent months collaborating with law enforcement officials after the FBI and other agencies searched his Springfield apartment in August. He was given an April 4 deadline to take a plea deal that could have landed him in prison for years, court records show. The arrangement would have required Riester to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute LSD and one count of LSD distribution. Lake declined to comment after Wednesday’s hearing.
Riester allegedly used the screen name “FiveEyeGuys” on one dark-web marketplace called Abacus, court records show. It’s unclear whether that was a reference to the Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing alliance between Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
Also unclear is how Riester managed to hide his LSD religion, sales and income from his wife, a Black Hawk helicopter pilot in the same battalion who “had no knowledge of and/or association with plaintiff’s LSD-related religious activities,” according to Riester’s sworn statements in his lawsuit. He denied flying helicopters while under the influence of LSD and acknowledged that his military service contract did not allow him to use controlled substances while on active duty.
Riester claimed that his prosecution could endanger U.S. national security, stating in a public court filing that he had “provided copious amounts of assistance to the FBI and Secret Service in their attempts to arrest and prosecute extremely dangerous and violent international Bitcoin, human, and fentanyl traffickers.”
He also believes bitcoin is sacred because of “the autonomy it gives visionary religious practitioners, such as himself” to facilitate the distribution of the “Holy Sacrament” (LSD) to his spiritual fellows, Riester’s attorneys said in a legal filing. His religion was not named in court documents or at Wednesday’s hearing, but the attorneys said Riester had discussed his belief system at length in Substack posts and podcasts over the years.
In the money-laundering case, U.S. officials alleged Riester and unidentified co-conspirators used a spoof email address to fraudulently obtain a $285,000 wire transfer destined for a British company. Riester then converted the funds into cryptocurrency, according to the pending indictment in the Southern District of Texas. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges; that trial is scheduled to begin in July.
