The white house with maroon shutters doesn't stand out much.

It's tucked in among other homes on South Main Street in Phillipsburg. There is a salon a few doors down one way, a diner the other.

The blinds were drawn late that morning on the house numbered 487. The smashed lock on the front door was the only sign of the raid conducted there hours before, when dozens of FBI agents and local police stormed the home.

Taken into custody following the early morning raid on April 13 was the leader of the Aryan Strikeforce, a man some say was attempting to set himself up as a unifying force among white supremacist groups.

Josh "Hatchet" Steever, charged with racketeering, leads the Aryan Strikeforce in Phillipsburg. (Facebook screenshot)

Federal court documents unsealed this week indicate that man, 37-year-old Josh "Hatchet" Steever and four others are charged with racketeering and related counts. They allegedly sought to obtain weapons and funds to carry out their goals.

The group supposedly met and stored their gains at locations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia -- including Phillipsburg and Allentown.

INFILTRATED BY FEDS

Five men were indicted Thursday with conspiracy to defraud the U.S., racketeering, money laundering, dealing with unregistered interstate commerce, transfer of machine gun parts and firearms by convicted felons, and two counts of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance.

They are Steever, of Phillipsburg; Henry Lambert Baird, 49, of Allentown; Justin Daniel "Rocko" Lough, 26, of Waynesboro, Va.; Jacob Mark "Boots" Robards, 40, of Bethlehem, and Connor Drew Dykes, 20, of Silver Spring, Md.

Steever, Robards, Lough and Dykes are scheduled for trial July 10 at federal court in Williamsport, Pa. -- all were ordered to be detained pending trial except for Dykes, who is restricted to home confinement. Baird's arraignment is scheduled for May 4.

The FBI's Newark and Philadelphia offices both confirmed they had taken "court-approved action" in Phillipsburg on April 13 as part of an ongoing investigation. They deferred questions to the US Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which issued a news release Friday.

The release and a report from sister site PennLive.com detail the grand jury indictment against the men: the Aryan Strikeforce was apparently infiltrated by the federal government by posing as suppliers of drugs and firearms, which the group sought to further its stated goals of protecting "the honour of our women, children, and the future of our race and nation."

One agent allegedly gave them 16 pounds of simulated meth in a Jan. 17 meeting in Tannersville, where they also got $4,000 in cash that they exchanged in a Stroudsburg Target store for Visa gift cards. Another 16 pounds of meth was allegedly delivered by an undercover officer March 12, for which they got $3,000 in a meeting in Hagerstown, Md.

They met at least twice in the last two months in Harrisburg and received weapons parts, according to the indictment.

The indictment also said that Phillipsburg was among the group's meeting places. Another white supremacist has said that's where Steever was living, and hate-watch groups have identified it as the base of Aryan Strikeforce operations.

THE STRIKEFORCE

The Aryan Strikeforce was active in Phillipsburg in 2016, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which in February released its annual list of hate groups nationwide.

SPLC spokesman and senior investigative reporter Ryan Lenz said it is difficult to determine how many people are involved in any hate group, but said this one has multiple members.

"It's more than just a guy in his basement. That's for sure," he said.

A Twitter account for Steever, who goes by "Hatchet," describes him as the founder of the Aryan Stikeforce and based in New Jersey. Requests for comment sent to that account and email addresses for group leaders were not returned.

The SPLC, based in Alabama, has been monitoring the Aryan Strikeforce through online postings. Through those, Lenz said, they knew the group was based in Phillipsburg, active for at least a year and was "not shy about posting what they do."

Some photos posted on the Aryan Strikeforce website. (Screenshot)

The mission of the Aryan Strikeforce -- according to a screed on its website -- involves "the preservation of our race, heritage, and our way of life."

"Steever has been trying to become a galvanizing presence in the skinhead world," attempting to unite rivaling factions of the supremacist community, Lenz said.

However, both the SPLC and Philadelphia-based One People's Project, another hate-watch group, have noted that Steever doesn't hold much sway. He was referred to as a "laughing stock among many of his contemporaries" in a One People's Project story on his arrest, with previous postings saying he ran afoul of some white supremacist rules of conduct.

Still, the SPLC reported in February that after previous failures factions were going to give unification another try in 2017.

The Aryan Strikeforce site includes a page for a "white nationalist alliance," among its photos and email addresses for organizers. No one on the site is identified.

"The activism is and should always remain faceless," the site says on one page. "This is proven to be the most successful way to strike fear into our opponents, and this is the only way we will win this war!"

Another infamous New Jersey Nazi, Heath Hitler -- who gained notoriety in 2008 for naming his children after Nazi leaders and, more recently, legally changed his own last name from Campbell -- told lehighvalleylive.com that he is friends with Steever, though the two haven't seen each other in a few months. Hitler has been living in Pennsylvania after criminal trouble in his home state.

"He's always been good while we were hanging out. Never did anything criminal," he said of Steever shortly after the raid.

NO SURPRISE TO NEIGHBORS

The 400 block of Phillipsburg's South Main Street has seen its troubles.

A convenience store owner last year was sentenced to three years in prison for selling drugs out of his business there. In 2014, a mentally ill man was fatally shot by police after threatening officers with a knife.

"We've been here 100 years and we've seen it all one time or another," said George Kounoupis, owner of Tom's Lunch, a small but cozy eatery, a few hours after the FBI raid just down the street.

"You get a lot of out-of-towners coming in and they bring their problems with them," he continued. "By and large the people who were born here are decent people. Poor, but decent."

During the early raid April 13, one neighbor -- who said he lived there for 28 years -- said he suspected white supremacists lived at 487 S. Main. They wore black clothes and boots, and made hand signals to each other. One had a "white power" tattoo on his head, said the neighbor, who declined to be identified.

Hours later, a woman outside 487 declined to talk to a reporter. She walked inside and closed the door.

Chris DeLorenzo, who lives a few doors down, said that he had seen vehicles with Nazi symbols pull up before. But he tries to stay out of trouble.

"It doesn't surprise me. Not on this street anyway," he said of the raid. "There's a lot of drug and other activity.

"That's South Main Street for you."

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.