San Jose man gets 3 years for bomb threat
SAN JOSE » A 41-year- old San Jose man who vowed to bomb an IRS office if he didn’t get a refund was sentenced to three years in prisonWednesday, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
In August, a jury found Hung Ha guilty of one count of threatening a federal official. He was acquitted on a second count.
Ha, according to court records, believed that the IRS owed him a refund and made numerous trips to the San Jose IRS Taxpayer Assistance Center at South Market and Post streets beginning in 2014.
A case advocate was the first to endure Ha’s fury. After he berated her over the phone, he reportedly left 23 profanity-lacedmessages in a span of 45 minutes. In one, he said, “I will die with you guys.”
Ha returned to the center and threatened to “blow up the building” after officials told him his case had been assigned to the IRS Office of Appeals, according to court records. He was told not to come back.
Ha didn’t listen, and he reportedly grew “louder, angrier, and more hostile and aggressive” with each successive visit. Arrested for trespassing at one point, he tried to spit on one official and head-butt another. He also threatened to shoot employees at the center.
Mental health professionals who evaluated Ha concluded that he had a personality disorder and held rigid views of right and wrong, “even to the point that such views are counterproductive,” his Santa Cruz-based attorney, Peter Leeming, wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
Leeming said Ha was a victim of identity theft. Someonewith an outstanding balance used his Social Security number to file tax returns, and his refunds were “wrongly applied.” In another instance, he was the victim of a scheme in which a tax preparer uses a person’s information to file a return claiming a refund as earned income credit and pockets the refund, Leeming said.
Because of Ha’s circumstances and the fact he didn’t seriously hurt anyone, Leeming said U. S. District Judge Lucy Koh should only sentence Ha to time served and order him to seek mental health treatment.
Koh instead sentenced Ha to three years in prison, which was 10 months less than what prosecutors wanted. She also ordered him to serve three years of supervised release.