By Eric Tucker The Associated Press
NEWPORT, R.I. – Large grocery and discount stores across the country have been targeted by a caller who threatens to blow up shoppers and workers with a bomb if employees fail to wire money to an account overseas, authorities said.
Frightened workers have wired thousands of dollars – and in one case took off their clothes – to placate a caller who said he was watching them but may have been thousands of miles away. The FBI and police said Wednesday they are investigating similar bomb threats at more than 15 stores in at least 11 states – all in the past week.
“At this point, there’s enough similarities that we think it’s potentially one person or one group,” FBI spokesman Rich Kolko said from Washington.
No one has been arrested, no bombs have been found, and no one has been hurt, though the calls have triggered store evacuations and prompted lengthy sweeps by police and bomb squads.
Separately, the FBI is looking into bomb threats on college campuses, including two in Ohio – the University of Akron and Kenyon College. No explosive devices have been found. Law enforcement officials said there was no evidence at this time linking the college bomb threats with those at grocery and discount stores.
Kenyon, in Gambier in central Ohio, received six separate bomb threats in a general admissions e-mail account between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. Wednesday, college spokesman Shawn Presley said. Local and federal authorities determined the threats to be a hoax and the school was not evacuated as officials swept buildings searching for the bomb, he said.
The University of Akron closed classrooms, labs and offices in its Auburn Science and Engineering building on Wednesday, after a secretary in a dean’s office received an anonymous e-mail that included a bomb threat.
The university received its second bomb threat Thursday in two days, this time e-mailed to the student-run radio station.
An employee at WZIP-FM discovered an anonymous e-mail around 8 a.m. containing a bomb threat directed at Kolbe Hall where the station is located, said university spokesman Ken Torisky. The university shut down the building and police K-9 units were searching for explosive materials.
Torisky did not know how many people were evacuated. Officials were hoping to re-open the building by 3 p.m.
The university closed classrooms, labs and offices in its Auburn Science and Engineering building on Wednesday, after a secretary in a dean’s office received an anonymous e-mail that included a bomb threat. The building re-opened at 4 p.m.
Law enforcement officials say the store caller claims to have a bomb and orders the store to send money to an account through an in-store money transfer service such as Western Union. He often claims to be able to see inside the store, but officials believe he was making it up.
In Newport, employees at a Wal-Mart got three calls Tuesday morning and wired three payments totaling $10,000 to an account out of the country, Sgt. James Quinn said. A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said the company was assisting in the investigation, but offered no further comment.
The first of the threats that federal investigators are aware of came last Thursday at a Safeway in Sandy, Ore. The caller initially said he had a gun and was watching the store, but after meeting resistance to his demands he claimed to have a bomb, Sandy police Chief Harold Skelton said.
