Man tried to help feds investigate his own bomb threats: DOJ
A California man has been arrested and faces federal charges related to his repeated calling in of bomb threats, pretending to be a federal agent — sometimes to investigate the threats he himself called in — and filing fake search warrants in federal courthouses.
As first reported by Seamus Hughes’ Court Watch, Anton Iagounov was arrested Friday, and a federal criminal complaint alleges four counts of false personation of an officer or employee of the United States.
But those charges hardly provide a full picture of that which Iagounov is accused.
According to prosecutors, the South Lake Tahoe resident threatened to bomb MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center in Laguna Hills, as well as city halls in Temple, Texas, and Boston; the Luxor Casino in Nevada; airports in Albany, New York, and Nevada; a Walmart in Albany, New York; and the office of U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming).
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In at least one case, the threat at the Nevada airport, Iagounov spoofed the phone number of Texas state Rep. Gene Wu, a Democrat, to call in the false report, prosecutors said.
“The search warrant revealed that shortly after making the calls, Iagnounov repeatedly searched for local news coverage of the bomb threat,” Hughes wrote.
In some cases, Iagounov would try to join the investigation into his false threats, such as when he allegedly threatened to bomb INTERPOL in 2021, then “used a spoofed phone number and then followed up with the FBI and ATF claiming to be an employee from the ‘intelligence community’ with tips on cracking the case,” Hughes wrote.
The next year, Iagounov was pulled over by police in Nevada, and when searching the vehicle, they allegedly found a fake FBI badge. He told officials that he got that badge working on an operation “law enforcement was ‘not cleared’ to know about,” Hughes wrote.
He also allegedly “created and attempted to file search warrants under the name of real federal law enforcement agents in federal court districts in Georgia, California, Virginia, Florida, Indiana, Utah, and New York,” Hughes added.
“It is not clear if some of those attempts were successful, but court records say that in at least two instances, a federal clerk’s office was able to prevent the false filings by doing due diligence on discrepancies in the documents,” Hughes reported.
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