Peruvian man arrested for bomb threats across PA, including Beaver Valley Mall hoax

Garret Roberts, Beaver County Times
·2 min read
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Police department handbooks often leave the chain of command to superior officers, but the process of where these reports go after that point can differ by individual departments.

CENTER TWP. ― A man has been arrested in Peru after being connected to a large wave of bomb threats across the United States, including a recent false report at the Beaver Valley Mall.

According to the Department of Justice, investigators discovered that 33-year-old Eddie Manuel Núñez Santos, of Lima, Peru, sent 150 bomb threats to school districts, synagogues, airports and hospitals across several states. In Pennsylvania, officials found that 24 school districts had received these fake bomb threats and the Beaver Valley Mall was evacuated after receiving a threat from Núñez Santos on Sept. 18.

“The defendant’s relentless campaign of false bomb threats caused an immediate mobilization by federal and state authorities, diverting critical law enforcement and public safety resources, and caused fear in hundreds of communities across this country,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in an emailed statement to the Associated Press.

Investigators say that Núñez Santos had approached multiple teenage girls through an unnamed gaming platform, pretending to be a teenage boy named "Lucas." After contacting these girls, Núñez Santos would solicit them for sexually explicit photographs of themselves. When they refused, he would threaten to kill the teenagers, blow up their schools and use other threatening tactics to extort the victims for the child porn.

At least four of the victims in this tactic were 13-year-old girls, but initial reporting has not indicated how many victims were targeted by Núñez Santos through the platform. After making the threats, Núñez Santos would fill out an online form or directly email bomb threat hoaxes to the locations of his victims. Investigators say several of these threats also included the victim's phone numbers, with instructions for officials to contact the girls.

Most of the incidents mentioned in the charges occurred between Sept. 15 and Sept. 21, targeting several communities across New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Arizona and Alaska. In Western Pennsylvania, the false bomb reports caused evacuations of several school districts and forced the temporary closure of the Beaver Valley Mall in Center Township.

A warrant for the arrest of Núñez Santos was filed in the U.S. Southern District of New York and Peruvian police arrested the man on Sept. 26. When extradited to the United States, he will face charges of threatening interstate communications, making false information and hoaxes, attempted sexual exploitation of a child, attempted coercion of a child and attempted receipt of child sexual abuse materials.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Man arrested for bomb threats across United States, western Pennsylvania