JCC bomb threat suspect on path to indictment
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                  World Jewish News

                  JCC bomb threat suspect on path to indictment

                  US-Israeli teen arrested for bomb threats to JCCs (credit: REUTERS)

                  JCC bomb threat suspect on path to indictment

                  20.04.2017, Jews and Society

                  On Thursday, Police will file a basis for indicting the 18-year-old Israeli-American teenager believed to be behind hundreds of bomb threats against Jewish community centers in the United States.

                  The suspect, whose name remains under gag order, was brought to the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s court on Thursday and police are seeking to extend the teenager’s remand. Along with the remand request, police will provide a declaration against the suspect, which will likely serve as a basis for his indictment. According to Hebrew media reports, the suspect is expected to be indicted in the coming days for extortion by threats, publishing false information that causes public fear and panic, conspiring to commit a crime, computer offenses and money laundering offenses.

                  Police arrested the teenager in his parent’s Ashkelon apartment in late March on suspicion of perpetrating hundreds of bomb threats over the past three years against Jewish community centers and other organizations in the US and around the world. He is also suspected of threatening a 2015 Delta Airlines flight and using the crypto-currency Bitcoin to conduct illicit transactions.

                  The parents claim their 18-year-old son has severe autism and a brain tumor that affects his behavior, which led him to issue the threats against Jewish community centers in the United States and around the world.

                  The teenager was born in Israel but lived in California until the age of six and is the only son of an Israeli-born father and American mother.

                  He was home-schooled and a recluse, having little contact with the outside world except for through his multiple computers, which were connected to the Internet by an antenna that sat on the family’s window.

                  Due to the suspect’s advanced efforts to hide his identity, Israeli cyber-crime investigators and the FBI employed a variety of undisclosed technologies to track the teenager’s whereabouts, eventually finding him at an apartment in the coastal city.

                  By Eliyahu Kamisher

                  JPost.com