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September 2nd, 2022 
Awake Goy 
When Samantha Ricks was kicked out of the JFK-QAnon cult led by Michael Protzman at the beginning of December, she was already in a downward spiral.
A couple of weeks later, Ricks was accused of substance abuse by the woman who had taken her family in. Then, child protective services said she had exposed her children to “inappropriate sexual behavior.” Three days before Christmas, Oklahoma Child Protective Services knocked on her door and took her 6-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son into foster care.
Ricks then raged online about how child protective services was secretly trafficking children. She accused everyone, including those who tried to help her, of collaborating to take her children away from her, beliefs founded in QAnon conspiracies about global child sex trafficking rings that are reinforced by extremist groups who have made it their mission to prey on vulnerable parents.
After months of spreading misinformation, lashing out at everyone around her, and even fundraising, Ricks took matters into her own hands.
What happened next was the culmination of her extremist views and desperate outlook: On August 8, Ricks tried to kidnap her own children.
The lead-up
The tumultuous months leading up to the kidnapping were preceded by years of instability and increasingly paranoid behavior. Ricks split up with the father of her two children over three years ago and recently had been making late-night phone calls, according to a family member, where she claimed that her neighbors were plotting to steal her kids.
The children’s father declined to speak to VICE News about the case.
The family member, who spoke to VICE News on condition of anonymity to protect her privacy and safety, said Georgia’s Child Protective Services contacted the children’s father to discuss allegations of neglect, which is how the family first learned about the situation.
But before anyone could intervene, Ricks packed up her car and fled to Texas, living in a tent before she arrived in Dallas. Her family said they called child protective services to tell them Ricks had left the state and was traveling with a gun.
What happened next was the culmination of her extremist views and desperate outlook: On August 8, Ricks tried to kidnap her own children.
Then, in late October 2021, Ricks joined the JFK-QAnon cult where the group’s leader, Protzman, known to his followers as Negative 48, predicted JFK and JFK Jr. would rise from the dead.
For over a month, Ricks and her two children stayed with the group. The group was holed up in hotels in downtown Dallas, and there were reports of drug use, all-night numerology sessions, and members drinking bleach from a communal bowl.
Eventually, however, things soured. Ricks was ejected from the group, and members accused her of abusing drugs and alcohol, according to Telegram chats and text messages reviewed by VICE News. With no money and nowhere to go, Ricks appealed to an online group that had formed to try and help families affected by Protzman’s cult.
One woman, known in the group as NavyMom, volunteered to take Ricks and her two children into her home in El Reno, Oklahoma.
“They were very malnourished. They looked like they ain’t seen the sun in months. They were white with dark circles around their eyes,” she told VICE News. “They would start screaming about some guy coming to get them.”
It soon seemed that Ricks was once again abusing drugs; her host said that she had drugs and pills mailed to the house.
And then on December 22, the Oklahoma Child Protective Services arrived at the house and placed the kids with a foster family in Stillwater, Oklahoma. It’s not clear what exactly triggered this, though Ricks posted on social media that she thinks her former friends from the JFK-QAnon cult reported her. Oklahoma CPS didn’t respond to VICE News’ request for comment.
When the child protective service officers asked Ricks to produce evidence of homeschooling, Ricks wasn’t able to do so. “She doesn’t even know the difference between a letter and a number,” NavyMom said of the six-year-old girl.
On December 22, the Oklahoma Child Protective Services arrived at the house and placed the kids with a foster family in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
The woman who took them in also claimed that Ricks was abusing her children, by pretending to breastfeed them even though she was not producing any milk.
“I’m a mom, I know what it’s like to have children and the whole breastfeeding part. Her boobs never changed size, nor did she ever weep,” the woman said. “She was not breastfeeding, a six-year-old and a four-year-old.” The family member VICE News spoke with also alleged the same thing.
A copy of an Oklahoma CPS report, reviewed by VICE News, found Ricks was an “unfit” mother for multiple reasons, including the fact she “exposed her children to inappropriate sexual behavior to include ongoing breastfeeding.”
“Help rescue my children”
Over the course of the next seven months, Ricks spent much of her time trying to find anyone who would help her get her children back, including lawyers and experts.
She even started a crowdfunding campaign titled “Help Rescue My Children Kidnapped by Traffickers.” To date, she has received just over $2,000 in donations via GiveSendGo. GiveSendGo did not respond to a request for comment.
Most of those donations came from a group called the S2 Project, an organization whose website lists a variety of far-right, libertarian, and conspiracy ideologies; their motto is “The Great American Citizen Investigation for transparency in government.”
Chris Oldham, the founder and national coordinator for the group, told VICE News that he has known Ricks for over a year and got involved in her case within days of her children going to a foster family last December.
She even started a crowdfunding campaign titled “Help Rescue My Children Kidnapped by Traffickers.” To date, she has received just over $2,000 in donations via GiveSendGo.
He called Ricks a “solid parent,” and said he “did not find anything outside of the normal bumps and bruises of life that would warrant having her children taken by the state in the manner in which it happened.” He also claimed to have met Ricks’ children and seen her interact with them. Oldham also disputed the label “kidnapping” in relation to what happened in Stillwater, instead calling it a “rescue.”
When asked about the complaint made in Georgia, and the fact Ricks brought the children into the JFK-QAnon cult, Oldham said that he hadn’t seen any evidence to back up the claims about what happened in Georgia, and suggested the JFK-QAnon group in Dallas had misrepresented themselves” to Ricks.
Another person Ricks sought out for help was Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, an extremist who founded the Veterans on Patrol in Arizona, a group the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “an anti-government militia.”
Meyer has claimed he has a network of safe houses around the country where he can house parents who have kidnapped their children, and came to prominence in March when he said that he had “granted sanctuary” to an Idaho mother who kidnapped her 3-year-old son from his father who had been granted full custody of the boy.
Meyer told VICE News that he has been in communication with Ricks for months and that he was added to several chat groups on encrypted messaging platforms that were set up in July to organize the attempted kidnapping.
Meyer also added that he didn’t participate in the planning, but when asked if he notified the CPS or the foster family about the plans, he said, “So you would expect me to inform foster parents that are holding children illegally that the rightful parents are coming back to get their children?”
A few weeks later on August 8, Ricks and a man named Elijah Erlebach from Missouri, pulled up outside the foster home in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and grabbed Ricks’ 6-year-old daughter as she was riding her bike around the neighborhood. Ricks and Erlebach planned to circle the block to go back and try to get her 5-year-old son, but their foster dad jumped in his car and chased them.
Soon, a police car arrived on the scene. An officer pulled Ricks and Erlebach over and arrested them both, according to court documents filed by the Payne County Sheriff’s department.
Inside the car, alongside the 6-year-old girl, the arresting officer found a fully-loaded AR-15 and handgun.
Ricks is now facing a felony charge of child stealing, which carries a 10-year prison sentence. She appeared in court last week and refused to tell the judge who her lawyer was.
Despite everything, many of Ricks’ online supporters believe she is the victim and that her children were taken from her illegally. Meyer reportedly continues to message Ricks’ family members, asking them for updates on the children.
Neither Meyer nor Oldham said they knew Ricks’ accomplice, Erlebach, and it’s still unclear how she first made contact with him.
Erlebach does not appear to have much of an online presence, though there are some digital crumbs that point to his political outlook. Earlier this year, he made a written submission in favor of a bill in Missouri’s state senate that would force teachers to put their lesson plans online. “I am aware that a lot of schools are teaching critical race theory in our schools. I am against critical race theory and it should not be taught in public schools or anywhere else. It is very important as parents to see what schools are teaching our children,” he wrote.
But the clearest indication of why he was allegedly involved in the kidnapping attempt is that when the car was pulled over by Payne County Deputy Jacob Secrest, Erlebach showed the officer a sovereign citizen ID and told Secrest that he was not allowed to be detained or arrested, according to the probable cause affidavit submitted to court and reviewed by VICE News.
Sovereign citizens, who consider themselves exempt from U.S. law, have been around for decades. In recent years, some of them have begun to focus their attention on Child Protective Services, or as they see them “traffickers.” Like many sovereign citizens, Erlebach’s car also displayed a custom license plate, which said “American National.”
Despite everything, many of Ricks’ online supporters believe she is the victim and that her children were taken from her illegally.
Now, the two children are doing well with their foster family, according to the family member who spoke to VICE News. They’re a little behind in school, and are scared of eating meat because Ricks allegedly told them fast food chains sell human flesh, but are doing their best to have normal childhoods.
Ricks is currently in prison in Oklahoma, awaiting trial. She will be back in court on September 15 for a preliminary hearing. VICE News was unable to contact Ricks for comment.
While she waits for her trial to commence, Meyer and Oldham continue to try and turn her into the victim in order to further their own crusades against child protective services.
“The bottom line is that Samantha is ill, mentally ill,” the family member told VICE News. “She’s suffering from paranoid delusions, alcoholism, addiction and she needs help. Instead of everyone trying to make her a martyr, we need to protect these kids and if she’s ever going to be a healthy part of these kids’ lives, which I am not opposed to, she just needs help.”
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So, a family member who is too cowardly to give name to her words is a credible source.
Is this family member a licensed physician qualified to make psychiatric diagnosis?