Man jailed for sending email threats

[R. A. Hettinga]

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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.


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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at 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'