Man charged with threatening Jewish centres to frame his ex

A former journalist fired for fabricating details in stories made at least eight of the scores of threats against Jewish institutions nationwide, including a bomb threat to New York’s Anti-Defamation League, as part of a bizarre campaign to harass and frame his ex-girlfriend, federal officials said Friday.

Juan Thompson, 31, was arrested in St. Louis and appeared there in federal court Friday on a cyberstalking charge. He politely answered questions and told the judge he had enough money to hire a lawyer.

A crowd of supporters who attended would say only that Thompson had no criminal record. His lawyer didn’t comment.

Federal officials have been investigating 122 bomb threats called in to Jewish organizations in three dozen states since Jan. 9 as well as a rash of vandalism at Jewish cemeteries.

Thompson started making his own threats Jan. 28, a criminal complaint said, with an email to the Jewish History Museum in New York City written from an account that made it appear as if it was being sent by an ex-girlfriend.

“Juan Thompson put 2 bombs in the History Museum set to go off Sunday,’’ it said.

He followed that up with similar messages to a Jewish school in Farmington Hills, Michigan, and to a school and community centre in Manhattan, authorities said.

In another round of emails and phone calls, he gave the woman’s name, rather than his own, the court complaint said. The Council on American-Islamic Relations received an anonymous email saying the woman put a bomb in a Dallas Jewish centre.