Police: Client posing as FBI agent assaults, threatens employees

The founder of a yoga company was arrested over the weekend after police allege he posed as an FBI agent and cuffed, assaulted and threatened to kill employees at a Boulder web-design firm that worked on a project for him.

Daniel Shea, 45, was arrested in Lyons with the assistance of the Boulder County SWAT team on Sunday. He is facing numerous charges, including burglary, impersonating an officer, criminal extortion and multiple counts of felony menacing, kidnapping, false imprisonment and assault.

According to court documents, Boulder prosecutors believe Shea — who is from Oregon — “came to Colorado apparently for the sole purpose of these crimes,” and has no other ties to the state.

Shea is being held at the Boulder County Jail on a $1 million bond and is scheduled to be formally charged Wednesday.

According to an arrest affidavit, two workers at the Goozmo web-design firm in Boulder were in their office at 1645 Canyon Blvd. on Friday when they took a meeting with a man who identified himself only as “Davy.”

The two men told police that Shea then entered the building dressed in a “FBI uniform” — described as a raid vest with tactical gear, including a Taser, a knife and a gun in a holster — and along with Davy cuffed the two men.

The two Goozmo employees said Shea had contracted them for a project involving his company,Yogible, which describes itself as a yoga travel and teaching company.

According to the affidavit, Shea said the $30,000 he spent on the project had “ruined his life,” and demanded Goozmo repay him. The two men told police Shea used a stun-gun device on them and threatened them with both a handgun and a knife — and said he’d hired people to kill their families.

One of the men said Shea specifically mentioned his 7-yearold child.

The men said Shea told them he had planned the incident and said, “You don’t have any idea how much I want to kill you,” and that, “I have nothing to lose by killing you.”

Shea demanded $50,000 from the men — $30,000 to reimburse him for the project and $20,000 to pay for the men he claimed he’d hired to watch their families and “hurt or kill them if they went to the police,” according to the affidavit. Shea told them one of those men was a German hacker who was poised to attack and disable Goozmo’s website and servers.

He also demanded a formal apology letter, which one of the men wrote during the incident and sent to Shea’s business email.

Police found marks corresponding to handcuffs on the workers’ wrists and marks that investigators believe were caused by knives and a stun gun.

While the men were able to identify Shea, they did not know who the person they only knew as “Davy” was, and police are still searching for him.

He is described as a white male in his late 20s or early 30s standing 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weighing 180 pounds with dark hair.

Anyone with information about this case is asked to call Boulder police at 303-441-3330.