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Juan Thompson, 31, arrested by the FBI in his St. Louis hometown, is considered a copycat who tried to make the woman seem responsible for widespread anti-Semitic threats being reported in the news, according to a complaint filed by the FBI in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The woman ended a relationship with Thompson last July, the complaint says.
Thompson began by sending her threatening emails and both emails and faxes to her employer, claiming she was an anti-Semite and that she collected child pornography, it alleges.
CLICK HERE to read the federal complaint:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3480376-U-S-v-Juan-Thompson-Complaint.html
"Confronted by law enforcement on November 22, 2016, Thompson claimed that his email account had been hacked a few weeks earlier," the complaint says.
On Jan. 9, a series of anti-Semitic threats that would grow over the nexdt seven weeks to more than 120 received at Jewish institutions throughout the U.S. began.
These included three at Kaplen JCC, the most recent this past Monday.
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As news of the bomb threats to Jewish institutions spread, Thompson began emailing and calling Jewish centers, schools, museums, and activist groups to say that bombs were on their grounds. the federal complaint charges.
The complaint says he used the woman's name in some instances -- and even his own name, which authorities think was an attempt to throw them off the trail and make it seem like she was responsible.
In one of those emails, dated Feb. 7 and sent to a JCC in Manhattan, he wrote: "Juan Thompson...put two bombs in the office of the Jewish center today. He wants to create Jewish newtown tomorrow.”
The email’s use of the phrase “Jewish newtown” referred to the December 2012 massacre of 20 children and six adults in a school shooting in Newtown, CT.
Thompson made eight threats to seven locations, beginning Jan. 28, the complaint alleges: The Anti-Defamation League offices in midtown Manhattan; the Jewish History Museum (also in Manhattan); a Jewish school in Manhattan, and Jewish centers in Dallas, San Diego, Manhattan and Farmington Hills, Michigan.
Last month, Thompson began tweeting accusations against the woman, the complaint says.
A Feb. 24 tweet said: “[s]he, though I can’t prove it, even sent a bomb threat in my name to a Jewish center, which was odd given her antisemitic statements. I got a visit from the FBI.
"So now I’m battling the racist FBI and this vile, evil, racist white woman.”
Thompson is charged with one count of cyberstalking, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. Unlike state terms, federal sentences ordinarily are served out in their entirety -- occasionally with a small amount of time off for good behavior.
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