In November 2019, a woman, who is Jewish, began receiving numerous threatening text messages, voicemails and Facebook posts. In several text messages and voicemails, which continued until June 2020, the defendant threatened to murder and seriously injure the woman. He also threatened to blow up her house and car. Some of the threatening text messages contained anti-Semitic references to the Holocaust.
On December 23, 2019, the first day of Hannukah, the defendant sent the woman a message that included the words “Suns about to go down. It would be a shame if your house were used to light the menorah. Or turned in a gas chamber.” On April 8, 2020, the first day of Passover, he wrote “I’m going to kill you. You better be gone because if you’re in [the victim’s housing community] Easter weekend I’m going to stick you in an oven. Or I’m going to shoot you . . . . I should send you to a concentration camp.”
On June 26, 2020, only a few hours before the defendant was located and arrested by the FBI, the defendant left the victim a voicemail message stating, “The police are not going to help you. The courts are not going to help you. . . . I will kill you.”
The FBI investigation identified several other people who had been similarly threatened and harassed by the defendant.
On April 27, 2021, the defendant pled guilty to one count of interference with the right to fair housing, a hate crime, and one count of sending threatening communications. He was sentenced to 36 months of imprisonment, and additional punishment.
Press Release: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ct/pr/new-york-man-sentenced-3-years-federal-prison-hate-crime-offenses