‘Burn in Hell’: Emails, Texts Bolster Wild Cyberstalking Case Against Ex-FBI Employee
Federal prosecutors say Gregory Roman could not take no for an answer.
In October 2021, four years after he left his position at the FBI’s field office in Kansas City as an intelligence analyst, Roman allegedly called a private investigator for information about a “decade’s old matter and a former FBI official’s involvement in that matter.” When the investigator, identified in court documents as “Victim 1,” stated he was unable to help Roman, the 56-year-old allegedly responded with an incessant phone and online harassment campaign that included death threats, insults, and bizarre sexual innuendos.
“Go fuck yourself you chicken shit cock sucker,” Roman told “Victim 1” during an October 2021 email exchange, according to an affidavit filed in the Western District of Missouri and obtained by The Daily Beast. “I will find you and I will fucking kill you.”
His alleged harassment campaign against two people prompted authorities to charge Roman with two federal counts of cyberstalking in Missouri this past December. Eight days after the charges were filed, Roman was arrested in the central Florida coastal community of Vero Beach, where authorities believed he had fled and hid.
Roman is scheduled to go to trial in June, and has pleaded not guilty. His defense attorneys did not respond to requests for comment. The U.S Attorney's Office prosecuting the case declined to comment. The FBI Kansas City office also declined a request for comment on the charges against Roman and why or how he left the agency in August 2017.
But court filings reviewed by The Daily Beast offer new insight into a campaign Roman allegedly launched against several people, and paint a picture of deep-seated disdain against the federal agency that employed him for six years, possibly fueled by mental illness.
“Roman has displayed a concerning obsession with the FBI, and specifically with a former FBI director, and believes the FBI is an evil organization,” an individual identified in court records as “Victim 2” told prosecutors.
The affidavit notes that beyond the two individuals he is accused of cyberstalking, two other people reported Roman to the FBI tip line, including one who said the former analyst “seemed fixated by the ‘Ruby Ridge’ incident and a former FBI deputy director’s connection to it. (Ruby Ridge was the site of a deadly 1992 siege by federal agents targeting a white supremacist in Idaho.)
“She stated that Roman believed that the Department of Justice and the Kansas City FBI were responsible for his continued unemployment since leaving the FBI and that his demeanor seemed ‘aggressive and scary,’” the tipster told authorities, according to the affidavit.
While prosecutors do not identify either of the former FBI officials Roman allegedly despised, the former analyst previously expressed disdain for former FBI Director James Comey while still working at the Bureau. In 2017, he told Politico that Comey’s handling of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's email probe “politicized the FBI, and it shook my confidence in his leadership abilities.”
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Roman also provided Politico with his March 2017 internal FBI employee survey, wherein he stated that saying he was “disappointed in Director Comey is an understatement, and I doubt I [sic] am hardly alone [in] saying this.”
But by last fall, the feds suggest, Roman was a shadow of his former self.
Prosecutors allege that between September and October 2021, he cyberstalked “Victim 1” and “Victim 2.” The latter said he had been friends with Roman for almost two decades and that they were “acquainted with each other through the Missouri Army National Guard.”
“Victim 2” stated that Roman’s behavior began to shift in November 2020, when the former FBI analyst started “having outbursts” and displaying “paranoid behavior.” It wasn’t until October 18, 2021, however, that Roman allegedly accused “Victim 2” of working with federal authorities and “spying on Roman for the FBI.”
“Roman made some comments such as ‘the FBI might rub me out’ and ‘the FBI is investigating me,’” the affidavit states about his phone conversation with “Victim 2.”
The affidavit adds that Roman only escalated in a barrage of text messages in which he allegedly demanded “Victim 2” reveal how long he had been in the FBI and how long “Victim 2” had been investigating him, before calling him a “lying fucking asshole.” Three days later, Roman allegedly continued the harassment campaign, telling his longtime friend that “if it takes me the rest of my life I will fucking burn you down.”
“It might take me a week or two, but I will make you pay. Your fucking ass is mine. I promise,” Roman told “Victim 2,” according to the affidavit. “I’m going to rip your balls off thru your fucking nose. You pathetic piece of shit.”
The threats eventually prompted “Victim 2” in November 2021 to do the very thing Roman was persistently accusing him of: contact the FBI to report the former analyst. The call came after “Victim 2” allegedly received an email from Roman stating, “you will burn in Hell. I will make sure of it. I know where you live” with the subject line: “You Sorry Assed Motherfucker.”
However, by the time “Victim 2” had reported Roman, federal authorities had already interviewed Roman’s wife—who stated that the former intelligence analyst “had recently started divorce proceedings.”
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“Mrs. Roman stated that Roman felt betrayed by the FBI because of the way they handled his employment situation prior to Roman leaving the FBI,” the affidavit states. “Mrs. Roman reported that Roman is under huge amounts of stress and has been on ‘retirement disability’ since March 2021. Mrs. Roman stated Roman began seeing psychiatrists in late 2020 and recalls Roman discussing ‘dissociative disorder.’” Roman’s wife could not be reached for comment.
According to the feds, Roman’s threats were not limited to the two people he is formally charged with cyberstalking.
In addition to the tipster who said Roman was fixated on Ruby Ridge, the affidavit states that a fourth person Roman knew from the Missouri Army National Guard reported him after receiving an email accusing him of interfering with Roman’s previous employment.
“If it takes me the rest of my life, I will figure out a way to fuck the both of you. I goddam guarantee it. You’re officially on notice. I’m going to ruin you,” Roman wrote in the email, according to the affidavit.
The former intelligence analyst even allegedly threatened a fifth person—a current FBI employee—last July through LinkedIn.
According to charging documents, Roman contacted the Bureau employee on multiple occasions, including writing, “…I will spend the rest of my life dedicated to one thing and one thing only: ruining you and all the assholes in the FBI I once thought were good people…”
“In a related public Linkedin posting, which mentioned the FBI employee, the defendant commented that ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold,’” the affidavit states.
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