Man charged in anthrax hoax
assault reported in the city Sunday.
James A. Lorman, 31, was charged with firstdegree criminal sexual act by forcible compulsion and first-degree sexual abuse by forcible compulsion, both felonies.
Police say they received a call at 6 a.m. Sunday from a Stewart’s Shop on Church Street where a 21-year-old woman said she had been the victim of a sexual assault a short time earlier. A perpetrator was not at the scene, and the woman said she did not know his identity.
The woman said she met the man earlier that morning on Broadway and that they began a conversation. The pair then went for a walk, she said, and while on a side street off of Broadway, he sexually assaulted her.
Patrol officers and investigators followed potential leads and were able to identify Lorman as the suspect, police said Thursday. With the help of the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), they tracked him to Watervliet and took him into custody Wednesday.
The victim did not report any physical injury. Police say the allegations are that Lorman threatened the woman, which supports the forcible compulsion statute under which he was charged.
Lorman was arraigned Thursday and sent to Saratoga County jail without bail.
He was on parole at the time of the alleged assault after a felony burglary conviction in Saratoga County, according to the state DOCCS website.
ALBANY — A Dutchess County man was in federal court in Albany Thursday to answer charges he mailed envelopes full of suspicious white powder to more than a dozen federal offices and courts around New York and Connecticut, including one in Albany.
Jason Pantone, 34, of Hyde Park, was charged in a criminal complaint with conveying false information and hoax, federal authorities announced Thursday.
Pantone is accused of using the U.S. mail to send envelopes containing white power to locations in New York and Connecticut. Each envelope contained suspicious white powder and a note indicating, or implying, that the powder was dangerous or intended to cause harm, authorities said.
The complaint alleges that beginning in February, Pantone mailed envelopes addressed to the Social Security Administration Offices in the towns and cities of Plattsburgh, Binghamton, Utica, West Nyack, White Plains and New York, as well as