Bomb threat suspect used Bitcoin, Google Voice

The Israeli American suspected of perpetrating more than 100 bomb threats against Jewish institutions used technologies including Google Voice, a call forwarding service, and Bitcoin, a digital currency, to make the threats.

According to an article in The Daily Beast, the 19-year-old suspect, whose name is under gag order, was arrested by Israel’s anti-fraud squad at the suspect’s home in southern Israel, where the squad searched the premises on Thursday. The suspect was also accused of a series of threats made in Europe, Australia and New Zealand in the past six months, according to reports in Israel. The suspect was reported to have also called in threats to the Israel Police two months ago regarding Israeli educational institutions.

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To mask identity, the suspect used a technology called SpoofCard that masks a number’s caller ID, according to the Daily Beast. When police subpoenaed SpoofCard’s parent company to trace the call’s real number, they learned that the suspect had called from a disposable Google Voice number.

The suspect paid for SpoofCard through Bitcoin, also untraceable, and routed his internet through proxies, making his IP address untraceable as well. In addition, the suspect masked his voice in the calls to sound like a woman.

Wave of bomb threats called to Jewish commmunity centers across the US , possible antisemitism(credit: REUTERS)

The suspect was caught after forgetting to trace the internet connection through a proxy server, allowing police to trace the suspect’s IP address, which led to the suspect’s home.