Complaint alleges eight threats by ex-journalist caught fabricating

Museum in New York written from an account that made it appear as if it were being sent by an ex-girlfriend.

But police say it was a hoax created to make the woman look guilty. Thompson also made threats in which he identified the woman as the culprit, authorities said. It’s unclear why Jewish organizations were targeted.

Thompson was fired from the online publication The Intercept last year after being accused of fabricating several quotes and creating fake email accounts to impersonate people, including the Intercept’s editor-in-chief. One of the stories involved Dylann Roof, the white shooter of black worshippers at a Charleston, South Carolina, church.

Thompson had written that a cousin named Scott Roof claimed the gunman was angry that a love interest chose a black man over him. A review showed there was no cousin by that name. The story was retracted.

Thompson had been accused of bi- zarre behavior before.

Doyle Murphy, a reporter at the Riverfront Times, an alternative weekly in St. Louis, said he was subjected to social media harassment after writing about Thompson’s troubled past in the fallout from his firing at The Intercept.

Murphy said Thompson set up anonymous accounts on Twitter and other social media posing as a woman who claimed she had been sexually assaulted by Murphy. Murphy said he contacted Twitter but every time one fake account was taken down a new one popped up. He said he contacted police but there was little they could do.

The Federal Communications Commission said Friday that it will grant an emergency waiver allowing Jewish community centers and their phone carriers to track the numbers of callers who make threats, even if the callers try to block the numbers.