He grew up in Vietnam where his father served in the military and CIA before moving to the United States when Langan was 6 years old.[12] In 1974 at age 16, Langan was sentenced to up to 20 years for robbing a man of $78 and fleeing police.[2] Langan moved to Ohio in 1988, where he converted to Mormonism and became an ordained minister at what authorities describe as a Ku Klux Klan-affiliated church. During the early 1990s, Langan and his childhood friend Richard Guthrie formed the Aryan Republic Army, a white supremacist group with motives to overthrow the US government. The group turned to robbing banks in order to fund their movement.[3] On January 18, 1996, the FBI arrested Langan.