Ex-Apple software engineer convicted of threatening FBI agents
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(KRON) — A former Apple software engineer was convicted of threatening FBI agents after he asked the agents to investigate the tech giant.
A federal jury convicted Brian Broderick on March 8 of threatening the FBI following a one week-trial, announced U.S. Attorney Ismail Ramsey. The jury convicted Broderick on one count of transmitting a communication containing a threat to injure.
The 32-year-old Santa Cruz man contacted the FBI repeatedly in 2021 and 2022 to report several issues, including allegations against Apple, prosecutors said.
He believed that the tech company was spying and conspiring against him, court records state. Multiple Apple employees told Santa Cruz police that they received threatening and erratic emails from their co-worker while he was on medical leave, court records show.
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The Santa Cruz Police Department wrote that Broderick was paranoid and “in the midst of a mental health crisis,” court records state. SCPD obtained a gun violence restraining order against him, and law enforcement officers seized his gun from a storage locker.
Apple filed a restraining order against Broderick accusing him of harassment on Dec. 27, 2021. A judge granted a 3-year restraining order.
An FBI special agent sent Broderick an email to follow up on his reports about Apple in May of 2022. Over the next several weeks, Broderick sent a series of “escalating and derogatory emails” to FBI San Francisco Division agents, prosecutors said.
On June 1, 2022, Broderick sent another email to the FBI stating he was an “American who is literally hunting an idiot traitor” FBI agent, according to court records.
Broderick went on to warn agents, “You act on this in . . . 24 hours, or I go beyond taking your livelihood.” On the same day, he posted on his YouTube channel a video he filmed of himself surveilling an FBI office.
Broderick will face up to five years in prison when he is sentenced on June 24.
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