SPRINGFIELD — A Hadley man is facing a lengthy prison sentence after he pleaded guilty in federal court to importing nuclear material — plutonium — from Russia, among other criminal charges including possession of child sexual abuse material and being a felon in possession of ammunition.
Jacob Miller, 44, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Springfield to one count of being a felon in possession of ammunition; one count of being a felon in possession of explosive materials; one count of importing nuclear material without lawful authority; one count of mailing hazardous materials and one count of possession of child sexual abuse material.
Miller was indicted by a grand jury on April 17 last year and has remained in federal custody on pretrial detention since his arrest on April 9, 2025, when FBI agents located firearms, ammunition, radioactive materials, child pornography, records of recent plutonium sales and harmful substances such as arsenic at his home at 108 Hockanum Road in Hadley.
Between 2017 and 2025, Miller used the online retailer Bonanza to sell thallium to approximately 71 customers. As with the plutonium, Miller shipped the thallium — a deadly poison — from South Hadley to his customers through the mail. Between 2020 and 2025, Miller sold plutonium, a hazardous substance that is prohibited from being mailed, to approximately 67 customers throughout the U.S. and abroad.
A man from Belchertown told police that in 2023, he and others gathered at Miller’s home to watch him light black powder into a ball of fire. On another occasion that summer, Miller had reportedly blown up a dishwasher outside the house, according to court documents.
FBI agents, during a 2015 interview with Miller, learned that Miller had begun selling radioactive materials, including depleted uranium, on eBay in 2012, and later under the website “Collect the Periodic Table,” which offered plutonium to customers.
“The gravity of the defendant’s conduct was underscored in 2015, when two FBI agents interviewed the defendant about his sales of depleted uranium,” court records state. “[Miller] explained that he was ‘only trying to make a quick profit with the sales.'”
Miller’s connection to illegal explosives resulted in multiple run-ins with the law over the course of more than two decades. He was first arrested in 1999, when he was only 17 years old, after he broke into Hopkins Academy in Hadley and stole hydrochloric acid — a bomb-making material. Police later found Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs in Miller’s home.
“Miller admitted to breaking into the school at 11:30 p.m. March 13 by kicking in a window and stealing a small bottle of hydrochloric acid,” the Gazette reported in 1999. “Several days later, a state trooper from the fire marshal’s office searched Miller’s home and discovered Molotov cocktails, CO2 pipe bombs , chemicals and other products used in the manufacturing of bombs.”
In 2002, police executed a search warrant at Miller’s home, where they found various containers of chemicals, blasting caps, a rocket launcher and homemade pipe bombs and recipes for bomb-making.
He was convicted in 2004 of one count of possessing child sexual abuse material and two counts of possessing an explosive device and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail followed by 10 years of probation, which he violated in 2012.
The charges of being a felon in possession of ammunition and explosives each provide for a sentence of up to 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. The charge of unlawfully importing nuclear material provides for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Mailing hazardous material provides for a sentence of up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
Possession of child sexual abuse material after a prior conviction on that charge provides for a sentence of no less than 10 years and up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark Mastroianni scheduled sentencing for Jan. 21, 2027.
