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Eric G. Hafner, 32, formerly of Fair Haven, also made calls and sent messages to state officials while phoning in bogus bomb threats to local and state government offices, a police department, two law firms and the Monmouth Park Racetrack during a two-year terror campaign, federal authorities in Trenton said.
Hafner told newspaper reporters in 2018 that he was on the lam for drug-related crimes in Monmouth County while staging freakish – and failed – campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives in Portland, OR and Hawaii.
Hafner first ran as a Republican in Hawaii and then two years later as a Democrat in Oregon, even though he’d never been there. Both times he campaigned on platforms to legalize drugs.
"Catch me if you can,” he remarked during one interview.
Hafner was living outside the U.S. between July 2016 and May 2018 when he issued threats to people and organizations in and around Monmouth County, U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip R. Sellinger said.
These included not only elected and appointed officials, judges, police officers and attorneys but also their families, the U.S. attorney said.
The targets were tied to a delinquency case against Hafner that began in 2007, when he was a juvenile, a 2011 Municipal Court case, and a decision in the Family Part of Superior Court that went against him in 2012, an indictment returned by a grand jury in U.S. District Court in Trenton says.
According to Sellinger, Hafner at one point sought to extort $350,000 from some of his victims.
Hafner had flown to Tokyo from Hawaii when he called an unidentified Monmouth County police department in July 2016 and said the officer who arrested him on the delinquency complaint "deserves to get shot," the indictment says.
Hafner also reportedly called the officer’s spouse and vowed their young child would get his "head bashed in.”
Three other officers in the same department were told that they “should look for that kerosene bomb…because it's gonna explode,” the indictment says.
Hafner also threatened to slice up an assistant county prosecutor assigned to the delinquency case and feed him to his dogs, then told the judge in the case he was “going to get a bullet” in the head, it says.
Hafner even threatened to kill an elected official over the reappointment of the judge.
In an email to one of the victims, Hafner wrote: "You need to get me the money owed or I will take what is mine and let's say it might be strikingly drool-worthy in a way you won't like. ... You're out of your league princess."
He sent another to that woman’s spouse that said they could “make this end” if their lawyer “cuts me a check for $350,000 to cover the child support that was owed to me but illegally cut off and higher education expenses....If you can't come up with the cash white girls like, (the victim’s two children) go for top dollar."
This was followed four days later by another emailed threat that said: “You won't get anymore warnings, you will wake up to a burning house. Try me."
Several more instances are outlined in the indictment.
The federal grand jurors charged Hafner with 33 counts in all -- nine of making threatening communications in interstate or foreign commerce with the intent to extort, 18 of making threatening communications in interstate or foreign commerce and six of conveying false information concerning the use of an explosive device.
Hafner was later arrested in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean, and then brought by federal authorities to New Jersey.
He ended up taking a deal after government prosecutors told him he faced up to 55 years if a jury convicted him of the various charges.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for New Jersey agreed to the 20-year sentence in exchange for Hafner’s guilty plea in May 2022 to single counts of each. It came on the same day that his trial was supposed to begin.
Because there’s no parole in the federal prison system, Hafner must serve out the entire term. U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi also sentenced him to three years of supervised release.
“These types of threatening communications are unacceptable,” Sellinger said following the sentencing in Trenton on Thursday, Dec. 7. “They cause serious harm to victims and will be met with a swift response by [his] office. This defendant has now faced justice for these serious crimes.”
Sellinger credited special agents of the Red Bank Resident Agency of the FBI’s Newark Division with the investigation leading to the plea and sentence, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ian D. Brater of his Criminal Division in Trenton and R. Joseph Gribko, deputy chief of his Civil Rights Division.
Sellinger also thanked detectives of the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, Monmouth County sheriff’s officers, New Jersey State Police and police from Aberdeen, Bradley Beach, Deal, Fair Haven, Freehold, Hazlet, Manasquan, Middletown, Neptune Township, Oceanport, Red Bank and Shrewsbury for their assistance.
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