A resident of Decatur, Illinois, Finton was arrested by an undercover agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Anti-Terrorism Task Force, who was posing as an Al-Qaeda operative.

Finton has said he was born in Visalia, California, and moved with his family to Warren, Michigan, where he attended high school.

[6][7] After returning from a trip to Saudi Arabia in 2008, Finton happened to make contact with an undercover FBI agent, who posed as an Al-Qaeda operative.

The FBI agent worked with him to plan an attack on the Springfield Federal Building and procure the supplies to carry it out.

[8] On September 24, 2009, Finton drove a truck filled with an inert substance that he believed to be "a ton of explosives" to the federal courthouse building, parked, locked it, and left in another vehicle driven by the undercover FBI agent.