Federal authorities have arrested an Oregon man in connection with antisemitic swatting bomb threats against Jewish hospitals and care centers in New York, including one that provides hospice care and senior care services.
The US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York announced Tuesday that it had charged Domagoj Patkovic, 31, of Portland, Oregon, with making a series of anonymous false bomb threats in 2021.
“As alleged, the defendant and his co-conspirators, motivated by their hatred of Jewish people, targeted Jewish hospitals and care centers in New York City and on Long Island with hoax bomb threats, needlessly endangering patients and staff by creating chaos and alarm,” said US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace in a news release.
Most of the facilities targeted with the antisemitic threats were hospitals, but one of the calls was to a call center for a network of hospice and senior care centers with locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, according to a charging memo. The call was apparently made to the organization’s call center and was forwarded to the on-call nurse at her home. The caller stated that “bombs are all over your facility” and made antisemitic threats about killing Jews.
The defendant allegedly made at least six separate calls of bomb threats to hospitals and livestreamed the calls to others on an online social media and electronic communications service, according to the U.S. Attorney’s news release. On at least one occasion in September 2021, a hoax bomb threat resulted in a partial evacuation and lockdown of an entire hospital on Long Island, but no explosive devices were found at any of the locations searched, the release stated.
The defendant was eventually tracked down and interviewed by FBI agents in Oregon in July 2023, who responded to the defendant’s initial contact to provide information regarding an individual with whom he had a dispute. During the interview, the defendant allegedly admitted to participating in swatting and bomb threat calls with others, according to the charging memo. If convicted, he could face up to 155 years in prison.
While the indictment does mention other co-conspirators, no other individuals were named in Tuesday’s indictment.
A spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office Eastern District of New York declined to provide names or further details of any of the facilities that had been targeted. He said the defendant was arrested in Oregon and will be arraigned at a future court date in US District Court in Brooklyn.
