Federal and New York State authorities have announced the arrest of Deer Park, N.Y., resident Daniel Sheehan, age 50. Investigators say that in October, the Home Depot employee sent an anonymous ransom demand letter to a Huntington, N.Y., Home Depot, warning store management that a bomb was hidden in the lighting department.
This was allegedly intended to demonstrate the letter writer’s ability to easily conceal an explosive device inside the store.
It wasn’t an idle threat. Police found and managed to disable a functioning pipe bomb inside the Huntington Home Depot’s lighting department on October 15, 2012.
The ransom letter stated that unless Home Depot paid $2 million, the writer would shut down the store’s Long Island locations on the day after Thanksgiving by setting off pipe bombs loaded with roofing nails.
The would-be bomber later sent another letter and made phone calls which police say they traced to a prepaid cell phone found in Mr. Sheehan’s possession.
The F.B.I.’s acting assistant director-in-charge, Mary Galligan, said in a statement that whatever Mr. Sheehan’s motivation for the plot, his “scheme caused economic loss, was a huge drain on law enforcement resources, and threatened the safety of untold numbers of innocent people, any one of which is unacceptable.”
If he is convicted, Daniel Sheehan could face 30 years to life in prison.
The complaint against Mr. Sheehan is embedded below.
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An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated the U.S. Attorney was Robert Nardoza. The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York is Loretta E. Lynch.
