If you want more money from your employer, we don’t recommend threatening to blow up multiple stores, let alone actually planting a bomb to show that you mean business. Not only are your odds of success small, it could also result in a 30-year jail sentence.
That’s what a Long Island man is learning after being sentenced to three decades behind bars for using a pipe bomb in his attempt to extort $2 million out of Home Depot.
Back in 2012, the man sent Home Depot an anonymous letter claiming he could plant bombs in the retailer’s stores without being detected. As a demonstration of his stealthy bomb-planting abilities, he actually stowed a pipe bomb in a Huntington, NY.
Police located the device — which the convicted felon claims did not have a trigger — and safely detonated it.
When his demands for $2 million were not met, the man sent a follow-up letter asking for a mere $1 million. What he got instead was convicted of multiple charges.
The man was finally sentenced last Friday, with the federal judge remarking that “This is a frightening type of crime.”
And though the man didn’t succeed in squeezing Home Depot for $2 million, the retailer says it did end up spending around $1.5 million to beef up store security in response to the threats.
Former Home Depot employee gets 30 years for bomb scare [AP]
by Chris Morran via Consumerist