<http://theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2004/09/09/1094530729080.html> Print this article | Close this window Man jailed for sending email threats Stuttgart, Germany September 9, 2004 - 10:10AM A German doctor's assistant has been jailed for 312 years for trying to extort money from banks, hotels and airports with email threats sent from internet cafes in Thailand. The court in this southern city ruled that the 44-year-old had sent dozens of emails threatening to kill people or blow up buildings if he was not paid because he needed money for a flight home from Asia. The man also said he was facing a heavy fine because he had overstayed his visa for Thailand after falling in love with a Thai woman, but that his girlfriend had left him when he ran out of money. Under the aliases Jonathan Drake and Vincent Baxter, he sent out 39 emails to German and Austrian institutions demanding between $5000 and $10,000 from the recipients and threatening to kill someone close to them if they failed to pay. He told airport authorities in the messages that he would detonate hidden bombs if he did not receive between $50,000 and $100,000. At Vienna's Schwechat airport, a security team was forced to hold a crisis meeting over the threats while security officials at Tegel airport in Berlin dispatched sniffer dogs to hunt for explosives. Most of the institutions targeted, however, ignored the threats on the advice of the police. Authorities were able to trace the emails back to Thailand and arrested the suspect when he flew back to Germany. The defendant, who had already run into trouble with the law in 1992 for threatening a German pop singer, told the court that he had found the email addresses for "the crazy idea of blackmail" on the internet. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'