A man from St. Simons Island, Georgia has been indicted for threatening to use a pipe bomb on an Internal Revenue Service building in New York.
Benjamin Stasko, 32, was charged Friday by federal prosecutors with willful threat to kill using firearms or explosives, and interstate transmission of a threat to injure. The online threat claimed a pipe bomb had been planted in the Ted Weiss Federal Building in New York. The threat was found July 6 in a comment posted on a federal agency’s website and directed at the IRS. Federal police officers with bomb-sniffing dogs and officers from the New York Police Department searched the building but didn’t find any explosives. Investigators later located and arrested Stasko in Georgia.
Stasko could not be reached for comment. He faces up to 10 years in prison, followed by a period of supervised release.
“Threats against the safety and security of our nation’s government offices and their personnel are deadly serious, and our office will work with our law enforcement partners to find and prevent such perpetrators from carrying out their threats,” said Bobby Christine, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, in a statement Friday.
