A federal judge in New York has sentenced a man from Oregon to five years in person, following a conviction for conspiring to make threats and conveying false information about explosives in relation to a series of threatening calls to Jewish hospitals and care centers.

The US Justice Department announced last week that US District Judge Ramon Reyes, Jr. issued the sentence for Domagoj Patkovic, 31, who terrorized patients and medical workers with hoax bomb threat phone calls to historically Jewish health-care centers in New York City and on Long Island.

“The defendant endangered patients and diverted precious law enforcement resources to advance his hateful agenda against people of the Jewish faith,” said Joseph Nocella, Jr., US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “His actions fed a rising tide of antisemitism in America.”

Patkovic’s spree of antisemitic, anonymous phone calls began as early as May 2021 and included accomplices. They made violent threats against Jewish hospitals, including threatening attacks with bombs and warning that he had placed C-4 in the building. Patkovic made at least six calls to hospitals and also one against law enforcement, livestreaming his actions to friends on the Discord messaging platform. One of the threats resulted in a partial evacuation and lockdown of a Long Island hospital.

During the threatening calls, Patkovic said Jews are “gonna go skyrocket up into the sky for Allah.” He also told a 911 operator, “I just called the hospital requesting my f–king million dollars or I’m going to blow this [slur]NEO f—ling b—ch to the sky.”

Patkovic, who lives in Portland, Oregon, confessed to his actions, including performing a “Sieg Heil” salute in a video from an unrelated incident. He pleaded guilty on Feb. 19, having faced as much as 155 years’ imprisonment.

John Durham, then the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said at the time that “as he admitted today, the defendant intentionally targeted Jewish hospitals and care centers in our district with bomb threats. In doing so, he needlessly endangered patients and staff and diverted critical law enforcement resources from their core mission of keeping our community safe.”

Nocella added last week that “our office will continue to prosecute dangerous bomb threats and swatting schemes to the fullest extent of the law, especially those motivated by hate, and those targeting vulnerable communities in hospitals and care centers.”

Christopher Raia, Assistant Director in Charge for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York Field Office, said that Patkovic “will spend significant time in prison for his targeting of Jewish hospitals across the New York metro area with hoax bomb threats.”

He added, “These hoax threats, motivated by Patkovic’s insidious antisemitic views, wasted law enforcement resources and put innocent lives at risk. The FBI will continue to bring to justice individuals who utilize swatting and false bomb threats to cause panic and unrest in our communities.”

Antisemites have used similar “swatting” style attacks claiming the planting of bombs at Jewish buildings.

Over the weekend of December 16-18, 2023, for example, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) documented more than 400 hoax bomb threat attacks — a record — against Jewish organizations, including 93 in California, 62 in Arizona, 15 in Connecticut, five in Colorado, and four in Washington state. Investigators believed that overseas actors coordinated the crime.

“At this time, based on similar language and specific email tradecraft used, it appears the perpetrators of these threats are connected. Additionally, these threats appear to be originating from outside of the United States,” Assistant FBI Director Cathy Milhoan said. “To date, none of these email threats have involved any actual explosive devices or credible risk of harm to congregants.”

David Procopio, Massachusetts’ state police communications director, described approximately 30 threats against synagogues in his state. “We did not respond to all of them, but our Bomb Squad did respond to several and conducted sweeps of the facilities,” he said at the time. “Many were handled on the local level by local police and firefighters. All are believed to have been hoaxes; no explosives or hazards were located at any site.”

The ADL noted earlier incidents of fake bomb threats driven by online antisemites in August 2023.

“For the fourth weekend in a row, ADL has worked with law enforcement and community partners to mitigate the disruption to Jewish prayer services posed by a group of online trolls who swat and call in fake bomb threats targeting synagogues,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said at the time. “The trolls use highly antisemitic language in these calls and appear to have targeted at least 26 synagogues and two ADL offices in 12 states over this time period. They appear to be targeting synagogues that livestream their services.”

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