Information Security News: E-Mails to Gates Lead to Indictment

[mea culpa <jericho () DIMENSIONAL COM>]

From: <waste () zor hut fi>

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/1999/oct/15/101500270.html

October 15, 1999

E-Mails to Gates Lead to Indictment

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) -- A teen-ager was indicted Friday on extortion
charges for allegedly threatening to bomb the headquarters of IBM and
Microsoft unless each company paid him $5 million.

The threats came in e-mails addressed to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and
IBM Chief Executive Officer Lou Gerstner.

If convicted on both counts, 18-year-old Jahair Joel Navarro of New York
could be sentenced to 40 years in prison. When he was first arrested in
August, he was charged with threatening to use a weapon of mass
destruction, which carries a penalty of life without parole.

No bombs were ever found, said FBI spokesman Joseph Valiquette. But a raid
on the youth's apartment found literature on bomb-making and terrorism
that had been downloaded to his computer, the indictment said.

Navarro, a Panamanian with permanent resident status, allegedly sent the
bomb threats in August to Gerstner at IBM headquarters in nearby Armonk
and to Gates at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash.

Navarro is to be arraigned Wednesday.

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