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Press Release

Palm Beach Gardens Resident Pleads Guilty to Interstate Transmission of Threats to Injure

For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Florida

Miami, Florida – Today, 60-year-old Paul Vernon Hoeffer pled guilty in federal court in Ft. Pierce to making threatening phone calls to two members of Congress and a district attorney.

As part of the plea, Hoeffer admitted that in March 2019, he called a Congresswoman in Washington, D.C. and threatened to come a “long, long, way” to rattle her head with bullets and cut her head off.  On the same day, Hoeffer also called a district attorney in the State of Illinois, telling her bullets were going to “rattle her brain.”  Again, in November of 2020, Hoeffer called another Congresswoman, this time in New York.  During this call, he threatened that he would “rip her head off,” and told her to sleep with one eye open.

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon will sentence Hoeffer on April 1, at 11:00 a.m., in Ft. Pierce.  Hoeffer faces up to 15 years in federal prison.

Juan Antonio Gonzalez, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and George L. Piro, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Miami, made the announcement.

FBI Miami investigated this case.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Luisa Honora Berti is prosecuting it.

Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov or at http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov, under case number 21-cr-14042.

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Contact

Marlene Rodriguez
Special Counsel to the U.S. Attorney
Public Affairs Officer
USAFLS.News@usdoj.gov

Updated January 21, 2022

Topic
Violent Crime