GREENSBORO, N.C. — A North Carolina man was arrested and charged Monday with communicating threats against a Jewish group in Charlotte, the United States Attorney’s Office Middle District of North Carolina announced Tuesday.
According to publicly filed court documents, on or around Oct. 11, Jeffrey Scott Hobgood allegedly emailed a death threat to an address associated with a Jewish organization.
United States Attorney’s Office Middle District of North Carolina reported after that initial email and after being contacted by law enforcement, Hobgood then sent a second email to the same address calling them "traitors" and calling for their "public execution."
Court documents further allege that in June 2022, Hobgood sent multiple threatening emails to a family member. He is charged with a violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 875(c), transmitting in interstate commerce a communication containing a threat to injure the person of another. If convicted, he faces a maximum term of five years of imprisonment, a fine not to exceed $250,000, or both.
Following the incident, the Jewish Federation sent an email to its members alerting them of the situation. In the email, they said the "threats were immediately reported to Shalom Park Security who informed their law enforcement partners Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department’s (CMPD) intelligence bureau and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who also responded quickly."
They went on to say: "Federation is appreciative of Shalom Park Security who realize that community members put their trust in them every day to keep our community safe. It is for this reason that we wanted to highlight this incident as a representation of some of the Shalom Park Security processes and relationships that contribute to a safe environment."
As the war continues, determining real threats from fake will be one of the biggest challenges for law enforcement, according to former FBI agent and federal prosecutor M. Quentin Williams.
"Because there are so many of them, you have to be able to distinguish between something that could actually take place, and somebody just talking and that usually comes with follow up interviews and further court corroboration," Williams said. "This is what they do for a living and they've built up a base of informants who could help them proactively, but I'd still say that we should all be careful…. If we have information about something that might be leading to harmful activity, we should alert the authorities immediately.”
United States Attorney Sandra J. Hairston responded to the threat in a statement saying, “No one in America should be threatened based on their race, nationality, religion, gender, or other protected characteristics. Individuals who target other community members will be held accountable for their actions.”
“No one should be threatened with violence or acts of hate because of who they are or how they worship. The FBI partners with communities of faith across North Carolina. Crimes driven by hate have no place in our state,” Robert M. DeWitt, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in North Carolina, added.
*A criminal complaint is merely an allegation, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
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