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José Quesada, 19, of Elizabeth, who was hired to provide office security for the building, pleaded guilty to making the calls from his cell phone three days in a row in July.
“I put a bomb outside. . . Gonna kill all the NBA,” he said during one call. “I put a bomb outside in the bush. No way out. Gonna blow up at 9:00 o’clock in the morning. Good luck. . . If you come out, it will blow up . . . ”
In another, he said: “Leave the building. It’s gonna blow up. Leave the building. Nowhere to go. It’s gonna go up. It’s gonna go ‘Boom!’ “
No one has delved into his motive. Quesada left a threatening voice mail on a Monday morning, five more voice mails in a 16-minute period on Tuesday night and a seventh voice mail on Wednesday afternoon, an FBI complaint says.
The building was evacuated after the calls came in, as police and K-9 units searched the area for hours in vain. Additional security measures were also put in place, including four armed guards on round-the-clock duty (See: Feds: Security guard made NBA bomb threats).
U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman credited special agents from the FBI and the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, as well as Secaucus police, for their work on the case, which was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Joyce M. Malliet of Fishman’s National Security Unit in Newark.
“A bomb threat is not a prank. It is a federal crime,” Fishman said, following Quesada’s arrest. “There is nothing amusing about scaring people and wasting the valuable time and resources of those responsible for keeping us safe.”
U.S. District Court Judge José L. Linares scheduled sentencing for March 7.
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