Peruvian national charged with making more than 150 bomb threats to US schools, institutions

A Peruvian national is accused of making more than 150 fake bomb threats to U.S. institutions, according to charges unsealed Thursday in the Southern District of New York.

Eddie Manuel Nunez Santos, 33, allegedly targeted school districts, synagogues, airports, hospitals and a shopping mall across multiple states with the false bomb threats.

“There are multiple bombs placed inside of all the schools from your school district. The bombs will blow up in a few hours. I will make sure everybody dies and rots from the bombs and then I’ll gladly smile seeing their families suffer,” he allegedly wrote in a Sept. 19 threat to multiple Pennsylvania school districts.

The threat caused approximately 20 different schools in Pennsylvania to evacuate more than 1,100 schoolchildren, prosecutors said.

The threats occurred between Sept. 15 and Sept. 21, and in some cases caused “massive disruptions” such as school evacuations, a hospital lockdown and flight delays, in the communities where they occurred.

In several instances, the threats included reference to phone numbers or IP addresses belonging to teenage girls with whom Nunez Santos had been communicating under a fake identity, 15-year-old “Lucas,” according to the criminal complaint.

When the girls refused to send him nude photos of themselves or cut off communications, he threatened to bomb their schools or kill them, sending the fake threats to schools near where they lived, according to the complaint.

“The defendant allegedly engaged in this reprehensible and socially destructive conduct in a twisted attempt to retaliate against teenage girls who refused his requests for nude and sexually explicit photographs,” said Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Nunez Santos is charged with threatening interstate communications, false information and hoaxes, attempted sexual exploitation of a child, attempted coercion and enticement of a minor and attempted receipt of child pornography. He was arrested by Peruvian authorities in Lima, Peru, Tuesday and faces decades in prison.

Williams said that the five charges Nunez Santos faces shows that individuals “wreaking havoc on our communities will not find safe haven merely because they do it from outside our borders.”

“We will find you, and we will prosecute you,” Williams said.

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