Posted on 08/31/2007 2:10:28 PM PDT by blam
FBI Has 'Pretty Good Leads' in Threats
Published: 8/31/07, 4:47 PM EDT
By JOE MILICIA
CLEVELAND (AP) - The FBI is looking overseas for suspects who have phoned bomb threats to more than 24 grocery stores, banks and discount stores in 15 states, including at least six new cases Friday in Ohio.
The callers have threatened to set off a bomb unless store employees wire money to an account abroad. At a Dillons grocery store in Hutchinson, Kan., the caller ordered customers and workers to take off their clothes and threatened to force them to cut off a manager's fingers.
Store workers have been so frightened in at least five cases that they've wired thousands of dollars to the caller.
Police in Newport, R.I., said workers at a Wal-Mart wired $10,000 to the caller. Authorities in Buchanan, Mich., said flustered workers at a Harding's Market sent $3,000 to an account in Paraguay, instead of Portugal as the caller demanded.
The FBI is examining those wire transactions and is working with authorities in Europe to locate possible suspects.
"We've got some pretty good leads," said FBI spokesman Rich Kolko in Washington. "Up to this point these are hoaxes. ... I think folks are catching on and not sending the money."
Four bomb threats were made Friday morning to three grocery stores and a Wal-Mart in northeast Ohio. The threats were phoned in around 6 a.m. to a Wal-Mart and Giant Eagle in Mentor and Giant Eagle stores in neighboring Mentor-on-the-Lake and in Green, south of Akron, authorities said.
The stores were evacuated, but they reopened within two or three hours after police found no explosives.
"We believe these are all tied into the same individual or group of individuals that are doing this all over the United States," said FBI special agent Scott Wilson in Cleveland.
In southwest Ohio, a Bigg's grocery store and a U.S. Bank branch in suburban Cincinnati also received threats Friday.
At U.S. Bank, a man told an employee to have workers sit down on the floor and to wire funds to an overseas account. Another employee completed the transaction, according to the Hamilton County Sheriff's office.
The caller also ordered the worker to put drawer and vault money in bags and go out to the parking lot. Deputies arrived to stop the worker from doing this.
Besides a bomb threat, the caller said he would shoot into the bank if demands weren't met, the sheriff's office said in a statement. He gave the impression that he was watching and knew the movements of everybody inside.
Complicating the investigation are apparent copycat threats. Criminal intelligence analysts are examining police reports to identify similarities in the calls.
"The issue now is determining which ones are tied to the original group of threats," Kolko said. "We still believe they're ongoing."
The FBI believes that among the other stores and banks that have been targeted are a credit union in Albuquerque, N.M.; a Safeway store in Sandy, Ore.; a Wal-Mart in Rio Grande City, Texas; bank branches at Wal-Marts in Salem, Va., and Fairlawn, Va.; a Macey's grocery store in Orem, Utah; a Dillons grocery store in Hutchinson, Kan.; a bank branch in Milford, Conn.; a Vons in Vista, Calif.; a bank in Savannah, Mo.; a bank in Ithaca, N.Y.; and banks in Tampa and Wesley Chapel, Fla.
The FBI also issued guidelines on http://www.fbi.gov to business owners and suggests that employees get detailed information, asking for specifics about the bomb, what it looks like and when it will explode.
The FBI doesn't offer advice on whether to comply with the caller's demands for money.
"We can't advise companies whether to wire it or not, but we hope they'll be real careful before they hit the send key," Kolko said.
___
Associated Press writers Dan Sewell in Cincinnati and Eric Tucker in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report.
Damn. They will get him, but the effort is effective thus far. I’m not endorsing this kind of behavior but whatever is being done criminally seems to work.
What am I missing here about workers in big chain stores bending over without calling authorities or at least their home store headquarters first??
These same Walmart workers can’t even confront shoplifters.
I must be missing something big here.
All roads will lead to Nigeria, I’m sure.
They will, right after they finish going after the ID theft rings that ship stuff overseas and the Nigerian Scammers. /s
Calling in a fake threat is one thing - it might land you 10 years in jail when it’s all said and done. But telling employees to undress (under threat of violence) raises it to aggravated sexual assault w/ a life sentence in most states. Oops.
Sandy was first of 15 extortion attempts
Stores - A man threatens a bloodbath if money isn’t sent to an overseas account
Thursday, August 30, 2007
JOSEPH ROSE
The Oregonian
An extortionist who has terrorized grocery and discount store workers across the country with gun and bomb threats in the past week chose a Safeway along U.S. 26 in Sandy as his first target.
Last Thursday morning, he called the supermarket with an ultimatum: Wire thousands of dollars through the in-store Western Union transfer service to an overseas account, or prepare for a bloodbath. The man sounded as if he was waiting in the parking lot.
“The employees were so frightened that they actually started transferring the money,” said Sandy Police Chief Harold Skelton. “Then they thought better of it and called police.”
But frightened workers in other states have wired thousands of dollars — and in one case disrobed — to appease the caller, who said he was watching them but may have been thousands of miles away.
The caller threatens to blow up shoppers and workers with a bomb if employees fail to wire money to the account, authorities said. In Sandy, he initially threatened to storm the Safeway with a gun, police said.
The FBI and police said Wednesday they are investigating similar threats at more than 15 stores in at least 11 states.
After meeting resistance in several calls to the Sandy store, the man claimed to have planted a bomb inside, Skelton said. Authorities evacuated the supermarket for more than three hours as police and bomb-sniffing dogs from the Port of Portland swept for an explosive device.
No bomb was found, and no suspect has been arrested. But the phone threats continue to seem all too real to many employees answering the calls.
In Newport, R.I., Wal-Mart employees got three calls Tuesday and wired three payments totaling $10,000 to an account out of the country, police said.
Hours later, at a Dillons grocery store in Hutchinson, Kan., the caller ordered customers and employees to disrobe. Employee Marilyn Case told The Hutchinson News that store manager Mike Piros argued with the caller, but they relented when he continued to make threats and instructed them to “do it now.”
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1188444319206060.xml&coll=7
My guess is that it’s kids who have no idea how much trouble they’re really in now.
This is a joke, right? Nobody could be that stupid.
I see somebody’s been watching the “Dateline NBC” show about the McDonald’s incident, where the caller made a teenage girl do all kinds of things. Why are people so willing to go along with some threatening voice on the phone? It’s one thing if somebody is holding a gun on you, but sheesh, anyone can make a phone call. I fear we are a nation of politically correct sheeple, who will die from lack of a spine.
Then getting merchandise back is sheer torture. I worked in a small shop in Midtown Manhattan a while ago and could pick who I would catch for shoplifting over who I had to let go for my own personal safety. Later on when I got on the subway to get home a dude would be selling the stuff he lifted from my store down there. It really was not worth the aggravation. Now this all bending over for a phone call has my dander up.
Good point, I’d forgotten all about that if we’re talking about the same incident, is that the one from several years back? It’s hard to understand people who’ll do whatever someone tells them to over a phone.
According to my sis, the no police report policy leads to even more theft at the hands of employees. An employee only has to make some merchandise disappear and report it as stolen and it’s basically forgotten.
Her store hired an undercover private investigator and nailed a department manager for stealing nearly $100,000 worth of merchandise over a year.
On the other hand my sis says that you would be surprised at how few employees actually do steal.
I think it was a few years ago. The trial is just now coming up, so they reran it on TV a couple of weeks ago. Naive teenage girl victimized by female manager and her fiance at a McDonald’s in Kentucky (instigated by a phone caller).
Testing the response system. This is an interesting approach: “Terrorism at a distance”.
You don’t even have to insert actual bombs or attackers (at least in these trial runs). Just persuade the individuals you call that you are “right there” watching them.
After the response system becomes inured to these calls, unleash the real thing. Then go back to “fake calls” for a while. Roatate approaches indefinitely, or until TSA and minions figure out an effective parry. Then move on to something else.
Welcome to 21st century asymmetric war.
For more information on the experiment by Stanley Milgram (and one even
more disturbing follow-up experiment)...
see #2 and #19.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1889008/posts
RE: The experiment of Stanley Milgram; I was really disturbed to
read in “The Sociopath Next Door” by Martha Stout that females of
the species were also test subject.
And were just about as compliant.
It disturbs me to realize that the average female is a few steps
away from being “Ilsa, She-Wolf of The SS”.
I had read about that experiment just yesterday. I’m with you on being leery of my fellow mortals as well. An instinct that I intend to reinforce with my 3 year old daughter after she gets older.
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